REVISION

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I usually do revise, I try to do it myself, but mostly I only catch errors when I read my essay aloud to myself. I usually ask a friend that is good with English to make sure I have another edit, and a new set of eyes to check over my paper. I think revising is good, because no first draft is that good after re-reading it.
Here is the essay I submitted to the online tutor and I plan on making all these revisions that were suggested, also make a stronger thesis:

 

“Winters Bone,” written by Daniel Woodrell, is a tale the unfolds the adventures and struggles that a 16 year girl is forced encounter due to a father addicted to meth. Her life isn’t the same as any teen, caring for a mentally disabled mother and two younger brothers. While all these responsibilities and dealing with living in poverty and an absent father who chose to leave the situation.[ON1]  Ree makes it her job to search for her father to keep their home. While on this journey Ree learns of the deep secret past of her extended family and learns quickly that family may not be there for her as she expects them to be. In “Winter’s Bone” there are different depictions of gender, social class, and race, analyzing how meth can get into the lives of people due to their social class.  [ON2] 

Drugs and addictions go hand in hand; living in a state of poverty it seems like drugs is what people turn to. Stressful and desperate situations that people in poverty go to things like drugs for comfort.[ON3]  Jessup, Ree’s father was a man living in poverty with a sick and mentally ill wife; his brother says, “He’s a goddamn promisor. He’ll promise anything that sets him lose” (Woodrell 57). Ree is out to find her father because of the warrant that he has out for him because her home is on the line. The gender roles in this book are very twisted because of the addiction to meth. Ree, the daughter in this situation, takes on the father role because of the irresponsibility that her father has placed her in.[ON4]  Since her father got caught up in making, selling, and smoking meth;[ON5]  Ree has to take care of her two younger brothers and her mentally ill mother. Ree knows of that meth can totally take control of a person’s life, which is why she was planning on joining the army to escape this situation, but with her father leaving it has been put on hold.[ON6]  This is an example of the gender roles,[ON7]  even though she is in the toughest of situations[ON8]  she has taken on the role of the father. Being only a teen, she grew up very quickly because she had to. Being from where she was, she could have easily ran away, taken off and leave her family or get into drugs like her father did. [ON9] Despite all that she had against her she overcame it all, which is where hope comes into this book[ON10] . “Sometimes you want the mind on. Stuff dances around in there when the mind is on, not often the specific dancing memories you tried to call up with actual specific thoughts, but generally even the uninvited dancing stuff tickled or intrigued or at least left a fuzz of feelings behind” (Martel 162).[ON11]  She keeps her heart open as well, she doesn’t hold any grudge against her father or anything that he has done, but focuses on what she can do for her family and stays as positive as she can be.

The race factor of meth was brought up in the article, “Methland,” by Nick Reding. This article goes into depth about what meth can do to a person, and how it effects more than just the person that is addicted.[ON12]  Families and close friends are hurt and affected by the things that meth does to people. This article calls meth the American drug: “What set meth apart was not only the idea that one could make it in a bathtub, but also that the people that were making it were so poor or working class rural whites. In that way, the meth epidemic appeared to have neither analog nor precedent in anytime since the revolution” (Reding 16). This part of the article sets a visual for how easy it is for people to make meth. The thing about meth that makes poor people want to make it is that after they sell it to someone they become so addicted to it that they do whatever it takes to get more. “So too, there had there been by 2005 thousands of stories across the country blaming meth for delusional violence, morbid depravity, extreme sexual perversion, and an almost otherworldly, hallucinogenic dimension of evil”  (Reding 43). This drug has become so easy to access and make, but its effects have are very harmful. The dramatization in this article, makes this issue very real. Plenty of people assume that meth isn’t there. It seems that things like addiction don’t happen, until it hits home. What meth does to people is very sad, and how it can take people to an evil state is very sad. The race that this article focuses on is white people. That white people make it, but that every color of skin that smokes it, becomes addicted and turn into things that aren’t human. “Tweakers are rats, crank is cheese, cops are cats” (Reding 56). Humans being compared to rats are one thing that the “Methland” article makes clear, that meth completely takes over. Reding does a phenomenal job of making meth known because he feels like it is not well known enough. He informs readers of the effects that it has, how easy it is to make, and where it is available at.

In “Winter’s Bone,” this poor city in a cold hopeless climate, the meth business is easily able to flourish. The social status that the people of the Ozarks are in is very poor and easily influenced. In the small town, where it is impossible to find a smile, meth feasts off of what these people are going through. In the “New York Times,” there is an article featured by John Leland, in this article it shows that there are several different things that meth can do to a person and what they become after it. “Meth users, on the other hand, that’s all they have is time. The drugs preserve the part of the brain that preserves on things” (Leland 2). The time that these people have because of meth, they use this time to do bad things. This article describes it as identity theft, because simply the people smoking meth are in a state where they cannot even possibly be themselves. This drug hits the brain so hard that it makes it nearly impossible for a person to not become addicted to it. This is why the people in “Winter’s Bone,” living in the Ozarks are easy to target. Since they have so much time to sit around, be in a small town, with no hope, its easy for the meth to take over this part of the brain. “Meth users are easiest to catch” (Leland 2). Since meth users are the easiest to catch in committing crime, this is why Ree has so much motivation to find her father. She knows him very well and has all this faith that she will be able to find him.

In “Winter’s Bone,” the meth attacks the gender roles of a family, it hovers the white ethnicity of people, and the poverty that they are in. Ree takes over the family role, doesn’t let her poor family and meth be the escape from it, and also because she is white and her father cooks it, it does not matter to her. All she wants in this book is to keep her family together. No matter what her father has done, going in and out of jail, all she wants is for him to show up to his court date so that they have the house to keep their family sheltered. While her father was in jail, witnessing her mother get dolled up and going to bars and not returning until the next morning, she doesn’t complain when she has to bathe her mother because of the medication that she is on. She takes on the role of the father of the house, and mother because of the care that she has for her two younger brothers. They are hard to manage but she does what she can to love them, but has to be stern so they know how to survive.

This book ties in the story of the meth situation and how it can harm a person and everyone around them. It provides hope, that not all people will be tied into it, and can overcome the poverty and the cold. It also puts into perspective that the poorer people can be easily influenced into doing what they need to for survival. That is what makes it sad, because Jessup originally started to cook crank for the money, then it became an addiction. Ree stayed strong and was there for her family, didn’t turn to drugs for her savior and took on every role that she needed too.

 

 

Works Cited

LELAND, JOHN. "Meth Users, Attuned to Detail, Add another Habit: ID Theft." New York Times (1923-Current file): 2. Jul 11 2006. ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times (1851-2009). Web. 12 Nov. 2012 .

Reding, Nick. “Methland: The Death and Life of an American Small Town” Bloomsbury.

Woodrell, Daniel. “Winter’s Bone” Bay Back Books. 2006.

Hi Alma: This writing cannot be your final draft. It needs a lot more work. You have some good ideas and good quotes, but the main purpose of your essay has not been adequately stated in your thesis statement, and you need better introductions for your quotations. Remember, research is required to support your thesis, but each source needs to be tied into your main ideas.

 MLA guidelines require a certain format for the body of your paper as well as your Work Cited. Please look up these guidelines, either in a Little, Brown Handbook or online under http://owl.english.purdue.edu/resource. Don’t forget to paginate and type your name next to the page number; if you use the tools that MS Word provides, it will save as a header and paginate all your pages.

I always suggest that students will be much better organized and produce better papers if they start with an outline! You need a title, too.

I could spend a lot more time pointing out your faulty sentence structure. It may help for you to read each sentence in your paper aloud slowly in order to identify the changes that need to be made. Your punctuation needs more attention also. I’ve given you a few clues on how to use commas and semi-colons, but please take the time to study these two forms in more depth.   Good luck. Neill

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 [ON1]Read this sentence aloud to revise it; it is not a complete sentence as is.

 [ON2] If this is your thesis, it needs to be more direct, have more purpose. The story doesn’t analyze, it describes. Meth can become an addiction to anyone, not just a particular social class. This story is more about the courage of a young girl, as you have introduced in your first paragraph. What is your interpretation of the story’s main purpose? What is the main purpose of your essay? Focus on those things when revising and redeveloping your thesis statement. Remember, it is the key to the success of your essay. Perhaps the purpose of the story is to describe/explain – through one example – how children’s lives are impacted by drug addiction and/or mental illness.

 [ON3]This is an incomplete sentence. I suspect you are trying to blame drug addiction on poverty/social class, whereas addiction affects our entire society. Also this sentence should introduce/be connected to the quote in the next sentence. Describe more of what the quote means. Eg: what is the relationship between Jessup and his wife?

 [ON4]Gender roles may be twisted, but Ree is not irresponsible; the father is. Rewrite these two sentences so they make sense!

 [ON5]A semi-colon is used to divide two independent clauses with the same main idea. What you want here is a comma.

 [ON6]Read this sentence aloud to revise it. Stay in the same verb tense throughout your paper. What has been put on hold? Her plan? Say “her plan” instead of “it”

 [ON7]This is a good place for a semi-colon.

 [ON8]This is a good place for a comma.

 [ON9]Again you have a tense issue in several spots of this sentence.

 [ON10]This is a good point, but it wasn’t mentioned in your thesis.

 [ON11]This quote hasn’t been properly introduced. Who is speaking?

 [ON12]This statement is really more what your paper is about.