The Power of Gossip

            In the movie, Winter's Bone, a seventeen year old girl by the name of Ree is faced with many challenges in her life. She has a never ending amount of chores and living with poverty is not the easiest when you have two younger siblings and a mother who is mentally absent. Ree does absolutely everything for the family and goes above and beyond for them. She goes so beyond that she goes to track down her cocaine cook father. The reasoning for this risky mission is to not merely pay a visit to him, but to tell him that the house will be taken away from her and the other family members if he doesn't show up for trial. Ree starts off with her uncle Teardrop but when he refuses to help her she goes on this mission herself. She ends up tracking down the crime boss, Thump Milton. However, he refuses to talk to her or even show his face. This leaves Ree either believing that her father, Jessup, is dead or ran away to avoid trial. However, the bondsman needs proof that Jessup is dead or they lose the house that Ree needs desperately to keep the family together. This is when Ree returns to the Milton home where she gets severely beaten. Ree tells her story to the boss as to why she needs to know what happened to her father and then her Uncle comes and saves her from the gang.
            The Milton girls come back to Ree's house and pick her up. Ree questions them why while griping a gun in her hand and they say, "We'll take you to your daddy's bones. We know the place. We need to put a stop to all this nonsense talk we've been having here". Ree replies, "I ain't said a thing about you". The Milton girl replies to Ree with, "I know, but everybody else has". This is really important because it shows how greatly gossip controls decisions and also a person. Clearly, you can see a theme of the power of gossip in this very specific scene. If the town wasn't talking about the Milton's and what they have done, they wouldn't even care to show Ree where her father's remains were hidden. Throughout the movie, there were other great examples of this power of gossip theme. Sometimes I was really surprised at how quickly word got around and I knew it was one of the main themes once this scene occurred.