Personal Katrina
Robert McDonagh
WMNST 427A
Gailmarie Pahmeier
25 February 2016
Personal Katrina
Throughout the class thus far we have addressed various issues and themes, however, I believe the idea of a personal Katrina to be the most interesting. A personal Katrina refers to a dire, and typically unexpected, event that changes one forever. This can be the death of a loved one, whether sudden or expected, the loss of someone or something of significance, or a disaster (natural) that affects the character in an overall negative way. This idea of a personal Katrina has been reflected through several of the texts in the class so far and I will be examining and utilizing examples from Joan Didion’s the Year of Magical Thinking, and Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone.
This idea of a personal Katrina is most obviously reflected in Joan Didion herself, in which she experiences not one, but several traumatic events. The most traumatic of these events is the sudden loss of her husband, John Dunne, one night in December. Didon recalls the entire scene as if it happened yesterday, “I was at the table, making a salad. He was sitting across from me, talking...[t]hen he wasn’t. Wasn’t talking.” (Didion 3). Didion continues to describes how John was slumped over, almost as if he was playing some sick joke, except this was no joke, her husband had suffered a heart attack, taking his life almost instantly. Didion continues on to say how she became overwhelming depressed, where her state of grief was so intense, it could be described as an almost mental-illness. Didion’s personal katrina, however, doesn’t end here, for her suffering and longing for the presence of her husband has continued throughout her entire life. She states she developed this sense of ‘magical thinking’, or an ‘if’ mentality; in the book, Didion characterizes this magical thinking as “If we sacrifice the virgin-the rain will come back” (23). Didion begins to believe that if she keeps john’s shoes, that he will eventually return home to wear them once again, leading her to hold on to this fallacy that one day her husband will return, from the dead. Her personal Katrina carries over to her daughter, Quintana, who is in a coma throughout the entire retelling. These events all add to the overwhelming sense that she is alone in the world, that her personal katrina’s (the loss of her family) has left her without anyone to hold on to.
In The Year of Magical Thinking, we see a single character who experiences several personal katrinas, however, Winter’s Bone encompasses several distinct characters, each who experience one or more personal katrinas. Winter’s Bone is set in the harsh frozen Ozarks of Missouri, a small community primarily dominated by intense methamphetamine trade, and characterized by an overall weak economy. Many characters in this novel experience hardships, but I feel it’s only right to start off with the main character, Ree Dolly. Ree Dolly has an almost awkward relationship with her already disgruntled family. She wants to do everything for them, and nearly does, but she also wants, maybe needs, to get away from her feeling of isolation. She dreams of running off, exploring a world or doing something that gives her life meaning and order and in an otherwise chaotic environment. She often fantasizes about joining the U.S. Army, “where you got to travel with a gun and they made everybody help keep things clean”, except women were seen as inferior, and were not allowed to join such esteemed ranks (Woodrell 15). Surrounded by this troubling feeling that she’s never good enough, she also has to deal with hardship of an almost non-existent father. To help get away from these, Ree listens to various tapes, each one allowing her to escape to a new and exotic environment each time. One of the biggest moments in the book, and the overall plot of the entire story, is when Ree gets the news that her father has skipped bail, on charges that he was running a crystal meth lab. Although this town is plagued by methamphetamine production, and it has become an almost natural occurrence in the lives of the citizens, it is still a very illegal practice. Knowing that her unstable mother will provide no assistance, and she cannot rely on either of her two younger siblings for help, Ree must make the decision to find her father on her own, in hopes of saving the only house they have. Although Ree experiences these katrinas, she represents a stronger-willed character, one that, even against all odds, still manages to hold on to herself, unlike Joan Didion who basically collapsed under grief.