"I'd be lost . . . ."

My friend JoAnn and I went to see Winter's Bone yesterday at our art theater in Little Rock. I was interested in seeing the visual presentation of the film since my son and I had read the novel by Daniel Woodrell several years before. I have always loved the line from the book when Ree Dolly states to her younger brother and sister, "I'd be lost without you two on my back." Once more I find myself thinking about the dilemma that some children confront when they are responsible for younger siblings themselves.

The film is set in Southwest Missouri in the rural backwoods. It could almost be anywhere else as well, especially in Faulknerian Mississippi. Ree is a teenager forced to drop out of school and surrender her plans to join the army when her addicted-to-meth father disappears. Her mother is incapacitated, unable to speak anymore, and her twelve-year-old brother Sonny and six-year-old sister Ashley depend upon her for their daily sustenance. The conflict arrives when we learn Ree's father will likely miss his hearing with the judge, and the family will lose its little shack and the land connected with it. Ree faces the choice of farming out her younger siblings to other despicable relatives or giving up her dream of escaping her situation.

Again I remember my own childhood with an addicted, absentee father, a practically incapacitated mother, an inner city environment, and my own responsible sister cooking and cleaning and teaching moral lessons to me. Again I ask the question, "What gives children the tenacity to 'step up to the plate' rather than surrender to the enormity of it all?" In the film, Ree consistently is able to say "no" to multiple offerings of drugs herself. Perhaps she had just seen enough to know she did not want that life for herself. My sister and I both did as well.