Winter's Bone Woodrell Analysis

In movies, music serves as an emotional cue for the audience. A scene can change dramatically with the music and can often create emotion in people. However, in books, there is no music and an author must use different methods to set the tone and evoke emotion in the reader. Through description and carefully selected words that is precisely what is done. Even though two words might have the same denotation, different connotations envoke various feelings in the reader. Different connotations also set the mood and atmosphere and display the emotions of the characters. In Winter’s Bone Woodrell parallels the narrator’s diction with Ree’s emotional state to align the reader's sympathy with her.

Ree’s emotional state is predominately negative which is displayed in the narrator’s diction. She lives through hardship and has to set aside her dreams to act as a parent for her brothers. She lives a difficult life because of her mother’s mental illness and father’s …show more content…
The diction displays Ree’s emotional state to the reader. When Ree goes to visit little Arthur’s place there is a description of his house and surroundings: “On the steepest side of the house”, “pilings had broken away”, “above a hellish plummet” and “beguiling bad idea”. The narrator’s diction is filled with negative adjectives when describing this house which is connected to Ree’s feelings to this place and the person living there because of the events that occurred last time she was there. Another description of the setting outside of Thump Milton’s house while she waits for him: “sleet crackled down”, “laid a cold sheen” and “The afternoon sky dimmed”. As she is waiting for Thump outside in the cold and dim garden she feels unpleasant which is expressed through diction and descriptions. These emotionally negative scenes bring out the narrator’s negative diction more than ordinarily to display Ree’s strong