Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Winter’s Bone, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Silence and Secrets
Family, Destiny, and Inheritance
Violence and Decay
Isolation and Independence
Women and Matriarchy
Summary
Analysis
The next morning, Ree, hungover and jittery, cleans out one of the hall closets. She shows her Harold and Sonny old photographs of their mother. Ree cleans out closets and crawl spaces, and instructs her brothers to take the things she throws out to the trash barrel and start a fire. From across the yard, Ree can see Sonya watching as the fire burns.
Ree is preparing to move out of her house, as she feels like her fate is sealed, and that soon she’ll have no choice but to abandon her ancestral home. The letting-go process is a violent one for Ree, and a lonesome one.
Themes
