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Family loyalty in Winter's Bone, Sonny Dolly, Mother, Harold Dolly,…
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Sonny Dolly
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Ree as responsible for her brothers; she "heard thunder clapping between her ears and Beelzebub scratchin’ a fiddle. The boys and her and mom would be dogs in the field without this house. They would be dogs in the field with Beelzebub scratchin’ out tunes and the boys’d have a hard hard shove toward unrelenting meanness and the roasting shed and she’d be stuck along side them ‘til steel doors clanged shut and the flames rose."
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Harold Dolly
Ree's youngest brother, and a year and a half younger than Sonny. Triies to be as strong as Sonny, but is much more sensitive.
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"To have but a few male names in use was a tactic held over from the olden knacker ways…Let any sheriff or similar nabob try to keep official accounts on the Dolly men when so many were named Milton, Haslam, Arthur or Jessup… Jessups, Arthurs, Haslams and Miltons were born to walk only the beaten Dolly path, live and die in keeping with those bloodline customs fiercest held"
Affair
It is obvious that Sonya has not forgiven the affair between Connie and Blond Milton, but family loyalty means she still brings canned meat, butter etc to the Dolly kids
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"Ree knew that [Blond Milton] had shared some hours on the sly with [Connie] years back, hurtful hours that Sonya had yet to forgive
Volatile relationship
It is Ree's blood relation to her father that is the crux of the book; he has used their house as a bond for bail, and it's up to her to get out of that situation
Ree Dolly
Her entire future relies on bonds of loyalty that hold her family together - if the family don't help her to find her father she will lose her house and land
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Symbolically severs her ties to the Dolly clan and its violence when she cuts her fathers' hands off. Ree has enough money at the end of the novel to buy a car, and not need as much/any help from the clan
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Brothers
Jessup Dolly
His death was ultimately caused as he compromised his loyalty to the family and was willing to be a snitch for the local law enforecement.
Teardrop tells Ree that Jessup loved Ree and her btothers, and that “that’s where he went weak.”
Protected April, his former mistress; “Somethin’ real wrong was goin’ on, and since then I’ve gone over it and over it in my head and think I finally get why he didn’t even nod my way. He was protectin’ me, see, by ignorin’ me. That’s when I understood your dad had loved me. I understood it from how he’d looked away.”
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Teardrop Dolly
Everyone in the family freely offers meth to Ree but Teardrop is the only one who talks about the harm of meth; “Then…there’ll come a night…a night when I have that one more snort I didn’t need, and I’ll show up somewhere’n see whichever fucker done it sippin’ a beer’n hootin’ at a joke and…shit…that’ll be that.”
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Teardrop begins to look after Ree towards the end of the novel, beginning after her attack
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“You own me now. Understand? You purty much own me now, girl. You do wrong, it’s on me. You do big wrong’n it’s me that’ll pay big.”
Thump Milton asks Teardrop if he’s “willin’ to stand for [Ree.]” Teardrop says that he is. Thump tells him that “She’s now yours to answer for”.
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Ree asks if she will be shunned because of her father's actions, and Teardrop tells her “The Dollys around here can’t be seen to coddle a snitch’s family—that’s always been our way.” But, he says, “that shunning can change, some. Over time.”
When Teardrop tell Ree that he knows who killed Jessup, she embraces him.
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Married
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Mentally absent, leaving her family unprotected and forcing Ree to step in as head of the household
"And you got the momma who went daffy in the head too, right?"...
"Yup. that's all me."
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When he offers to take Sonny in, Ree says "Sonny’n Harold’ll die livin’ in a fuckin’ cave with me’n Mom before they’ll ever spend a single fuckin’ night with you. Goddam you, Blond Milton"
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