Coping with teenage tantrums is no picnic.
In Daniel Woodrell’s superb novel , Winter’s Bone, the protagonist is a young woman named Ree whose father is missing presumed dead and whose mother has a wasting illness that reduces her to a vegetative state.
Ree is forced prematurely into the role of a single parent to her two younger brothers. In one scene she is teaching them to skin and gut a squirrel. One of the boys complains and says he hasn’t got the stomach for the job – Ree is resolute : “You got a whole bunch of stuff you’re goin’ to have to get over bein’ scared of, boy”, she tells him. It is her way of saying that he cannot take for granted that she is going to be around forever.
I love this scene because it acknowledges the harsh reality that one day you are going to have to fend for yourself. In Woodrell’s story, this initiation comes early; in less harsh conditions it occurs around the time of adolescence. This is an age when teenagers are asserting their right to free expression while at the same time lack the wherewithal to be truly independent. Continue reading
