David Hubbard
Mrs. Cline
English 102
19 March 2012
The
Meth Family
A family provides more than shelter, protection and nourishment; it gives us
meaning, support and unconditional love. Families are more than the sum of the
individuals. They are a powerful unit that builds communities and countries.
Today the foundation of family is being ripped away by a common, cheap and
dangerously addictive drug. “Methamphetamine misuse affects not just
individuals, but entire families” and communities (Sheridan par. 3). Woodrell
paints a realistic picture in his novel, Winter’s
Bones, of the destruction of the family through meth usages. Reding paints
an equally gruesome picture of a father whose life fall apart, due to his meth
addiction. As the dominoes fall, we begin to see the impact that Jessup’s and
Jarvis’ addiction had on their entire family, member by member, and ultimately
the community.
In
our patriarchal society, the man is responsible for heading the household. He is
often the breadwinner if not the sole income provider. He makes the important
decisions that affect a families’ welfare and ultimately he is the protector.
In Winter’s Bone, Jessup Dolly is
societies anti-father. He left the family with no explanation and no means to
provide for themselves while under the threat of losing their home. Jessup is a
small, rural town meth cook, who served time behind bars previously for cooking
crank. Ree discovers that Jessup was murdered due to his betrayal of the meth
community in an attempt to come home.
Roland
Jarvis a father, observed by Reding, was your typical, hard-working American
dad. He had a family, great job, married and respected. He began using meth to
increase productivity at work, working longer days and more shifts to make more
money. Eventually the drug takes its toll on the man, and as the story unravels
the devastating effects of meth take their toll. Jarvis loses all control with
the drug when his employment status decreases. His wages suffer, his hours
increase and the work load doubles. He fails, as does Jessup Dolly, to realize
meth is destroying the foundation of his humanity. He soon comes to terms that
he is working for meth. He finds out meth can be made at home, there for he
quits his job and becomes a cook. Much like the characters depicted in
Woodrell’s Winters Bone. Both expose that financial hardships increase the
likelihood for people to turn to meth. As Jarvis continues down the rabbit
hole, eventually he hits the bottom, blows himself up and his house from the
flammable chemicals used in his meth lab. Woodrell also mentions the horrors of
Meth lab's exploding, that the toxic chemicals can melt your skin clean off,
even years after the fire. Both are stressing the dangers of meth cooking and
the lack of this perception by those who do it.
Roland
Jarvis is described gruesomely in detail as to the damage his body underwent
when the Meth lab in his basement exploded. "His skin was dripping off his
body in sheets" (Reding 42). Jarvis was so high on meth; he was running in
and out of his house trying to salvage possessions, not knowing he was
literally cooking himself alive. "His nose was all but gone now,
too, and he ran back and forth among the gathered neighbors, unable to scream,
for his esophagus and his voice box had cooked inside his throat" (Reding
42). Jarvis divorced his wife, receives limited visitation to his kids, lost his
house, and nearly his life. This horror is similar to Ree having to remove her
father’s hands to prove his death. Evil and horrible things come from meth.
The
mother is the nurturer and teacher. She also takes on the roles of housekeep
and child rearing. Connie Dolly is an absent mother, who is removed from
reality. Ree’s mother just sits in a chair adding to the burdens already placed
on her. It is unclear why Connie is in this state, but Ree believes that meth
and the trouble it brought was, “exactly the sort of shit she went crazy to get
away from” (Woodrell 85). Another argument is that Connie may have damaged her
brain from frequent use of crank. “Methamphetamine kills by causing heart
failure, brain damage and stroke. It causes more damage to the brain than
alcohol, heroin or cocaine” (Boulard par. 61).
Ree loves her mother, but is angry that she is unable to help the
family, the way a mother should. Jarvis’ wife also hurts the family more than
she helped, “born at the peak of his parents’ intravenous use, [their child]
was wearing a colostomy bag by the age of ten” (Reding 43). Parents who use
meth are no parents at all.
With
her father gone and her mother a burden, Ree Dolly is left to raise her
siblings. Her younger brothers, Sonny and Harold, are a constant stress and
problem. Sonny the oldest brother, was a fighter, “his fists made hard young
knots, and he’d become a scrapper at school” (Woodrell 7). Sheridan concluded
in her study that aggression is common in young children whose parents use
meth. “In homes were methamphetamine is misused, multiple stressors such as
exposure to adult violence, criminality and child maltreatment may place
children at risk for the development of physical aggression” (Sheridan par.6).
Violence is common in the Dolly clan and is frequently witnessed by and
targeted at the children.
Ree
internalizes her anger, unlike her brother’s outward anger, by forming an
inappropriate relationship, in her mind, with her friend Gail and ostracizing
males. Sheridan found that, “girls' expression of aggression often takes the
form of social/relational aggression; that is, harming others through
manipulating their relationships, for example, through malicious gossip or
exclusion” (Sheridan par.68). Ree resents men, due to the abusive treatment she
has received from them in the past including a sexual incident with a family
friend. Ree was raped by Little Arthur after he drugged her. Sexual abuse is
often common in meth homes, since parents are often neglectful of parental
responsibilities during “crashes.” Methamphetamine misuse is associated not
only with poor judgment and impulse control, but with heightened sexual
arousal” (Sheridan par.71).
Ree
is a teenager who dreams of removing herself from her family and the community
by joining the Army. She stresses, that her younger brothers will grow up
without carrying on the families’ legacy of cooking, which if not for her
prevention, would surely happen. “So many Dolly kids were…ruined before they
had chin hair, groomed to live outside square law and abide by the remorseless
blood-soaked commandments” (Woodrell 8). Ree sees the evils of meth and refuses
it several times in the novel. She is strong, fearless and heroic and one of
the few characters in the book who do not use.
Extended
family can be equally important as the nuclear family. Aunts, Uncles,
Grandparents, cousins and all other blood related relatives are an additional
support group. In Ree’s story, she turns to her relatives when in need and they
turn her away. They lie to her, threaten her and physically harm her. A
majority of Ree’s extended family uses and/or cooks crank and a side effect is,
“heightened levels of both anxiety and aggression to paranoia, hallucinations
and even psychosis (Redfield par. 5). Her
extended family is scared and paranoid that she’ll uncover an inconvenient
truth about their meth cooking and drug dealing.
Families
are intertwined with the community in which they live. If one suffers, so does
the other. In Ree’s small town the effects of meth are evident from the burned
meth labs to the crooked cops to the murders. This creates internal pressure
and a feeling of fear as well as many other social burdens. “For the states,
the manufacture and use of methamphetamine presents a plateful of social, child
welfare, environmental, criminal justice and economic challenges, all begging
to be addressed at the same time” (Boulard par.10). Reding, upon investigating
meth in small rural towns, interviewed a doctor who described meth as
“sociocultural cancer” (Reding 11). It destroys a culture, by infecting
individuals and spreading. Incurring a high cost, both financially and
emotionally, on all.
Methamphetamine destroys families, creates
violence, induces crime, and kills. They reveal their positions differently,
but the message is the same. Woodrell's Ree is an example of a broken life, due
to the destructive forces meth harnesses towards the user and the people around
the user. Ree is caught in a storm of pain, anger, forced responsibility and
early age maturity. She has many roles: a daughter, a mother, a sister, father,
a care taker, and a power of attorney. Though, in reality she is still just a
child. Jarvis is the American dream crushed by a downward spiral, in which he
takes his family. Her journey and Jarvis’ tale are pleads for help to the
common family, plagued with meth abuse, and the lives in which meth destroys.
