This post will contain questions and statements about the book, and I should warn anyone reading the following that there will be plenty of spoilers regarding the book.
Thank you, CharlesTheBold, for that list of differences. I'd like to ask you about your item 5 and how it is "hinted that Ree is sexually attracted to her" (Gail).
It seems to be much more than hinted at in the book (IMHO).
1.) We read that Ree and Gail, when they were younger, practiced kissing with the use of their tongues and faked screwing each other taking turns acting as the man and the woman. Those activities are way more than the usual kisses and hugs they exchange when they meet or each calling the other "Sweet Pea."
2.) We also know they sleep together when Gail was mad at her husband, Floyd, when he says he's going to check his "deer blind" but really is banging his girlfriend, Heather.
3.) When Ree is beaten up and is kicked and stomped upon, Gail cleans her entire naked body. They consistently have no modesty in each other's company. They discuss the size of their breasts when Gail is nursing baby Ned.
4.) The two young women go to an icy spring (in winter)--mostly to get the very cold water onto Ree's aching wounds and then get the warmth of the fire onto her and then they repeat it--this is good medical advice. Gail is much more than a friend, and she gets into the icy water naked with Ree.
5.) We also know that young Ree has had two bad experiences with males. She was drugged and raped by Little Arthur a couple of years ago. Plus, she and a boy tried kissing and, when she suggested to him to use his tongue, he said, "Yuck!"
6.) Her parents and everybody else we know anything about regarding their sex lives have also committed adultery. Ree wouldn't think much of marriage or the faithfulness of the men she has known. Also, when Ree tells Gail that she never used to "eat sh!t" from Floyd, Gail says that things are different when you are married.
7.) When Teardrop tells her he could have married her off to three guys at the bar they go to "poke a stick at 'em" and see what's going on, Ree says very clearly that she's not interested in marriage.
8.) She *is* interested in joining the Army. I have been in the Army and have my opinion re the amount of lesbianism in the Army (IMHO).
9.) All of these could show she has, or has been driven to, lesbian tendencies. However, and this may be the most important part, there was a conversation in the book when Gail says she is going back to her husband and will not be living with Ree anymore. This is not what Ree wants to hear.
Ree asks her why--didn't she like it? Gail says she liked it but not enough. I figure that "it" is physical lesbian love, and they have been performing sex acts upon each another while they lived and slept together. If Ree had meant just living at her house, she wouldn't have called that experience "it."
What do you think?
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"Were you raised in a household without consequences?" -- Dwight K. Schrute
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rod-311
10 years ago
Copious Spoilers Here.
Think you're mostly right, Eclair (if I may call you that).
I watched the movie, read the book, then watched the movie again (just now).
Gail is certainly more important in the book -- but not too shortchanged in the movie. Since I like hot springs, I certainly picked up on that in the book. More hot springs out here in the west, though.
If I recall correctly, it seemed to me that Ree was more in the dark about the whole thing until she goes out and gets her father's hands. Then it's all clear (and something about the whole process gives Teardrop what he needs to know who killed her father)(and he's going off to his revenge and doom).
In the book, it's clear that she's going to be able to make it. They keep the house and the woodlot and the sheriff and the bondsman and others are all on her side. She doesn't escape to the Army (which is her clear goal at the beginning of the book), but she's going to be able to save BOTH of her bothers and escape the family fate.
And that's another thing about the novel: some mysterious background about the family's origins and patterning and blah, blah, blah that I could do without.
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