The conflict was resolved when Bone moves out her house with her mother and Glen. Now come to think of it, I don’t really remember what had happened to her sister Reese in the end. Maybe it wasn’t even mentioned for it didn’t have to much direct affect of the end. Bone went to go live with Aunt Raylene who seemed to have grown into one of her favorite Aunts and had no idea where mama and Glen were headed. She thought maybe California or Florida “somewhere a working man could go and ick oranges.”
Mama in the end essentially proved to the reader she definitely got pregnant far too young and wasn’t ready to be a mother, for as much as she loved Bone, and the reader knows this even if they start to doubt it towards the end, she left with “Daddy Glen,” the man who raped and constantly beat her 12 year old daughter. This was the climax as well, when Daddy Glen finally rapes Bone, instead of just touching her. I was hoping with all my might that Daddy Glen wouldn’t have gotten her pregnant, but I guess maybe now looking back that might not be able to happen since she never mentioned a menstruation. There were some other major climatic points around this time, but none worth mentioning immediately because they related to her family mostly. But one of her Uncles promised her vengeance, with unspoken words that he would kill Glen.
Bone changed by being forced to be on her own, and now struggles with the idea of love even more. Too bad her mother couldn’t see that she never really felt loved. Her mother was too concerned for herself and Glen than anyone else. Always “don’t make him mad.” I don’t know if Bone necessarily did learn anything, because she is still mentally struggling badly in the end. She still doesn’t know how Mama or Glen could love her but she knows she loves Mama so badly that before she got raped she told her to be with Glen, she just couldn’t be there as well. It was like an ultimatum “me or him?” without being so mean.
She promised Mama she would never hate her but in the end didn’t know what to feel when her mom so willingly let Glen back into her life, moments after the rape. She didn’t even stay with Bone in the hospital. She never was there to promise Bone when she woke up that she was still loved and it wasn’t her fault. That’s what Bone needed most, was someone to tell her it was not her fault. There is nothing in the world a twelve year old could do to cause such an awful thing to happen to her. She fought and kicked the entire time and certainly didn’t enjoy it, like Daddy Glen had said she’d been wanting it.
She was so confused about the whole situation but at least in the end she ended up with someone who would understand and show Bone nothing but unconditional love. That’s what Bone needed most, was to feel loved, and not just hear some words. How does love beat a child till she’s got a broken tail bone? How does love rape their wife’s 12 year old daughter? It shouldn’t. That love, is sick and twisted. That was not the love Bone needed in her life. Daddy Glen had been so messed up by his own father and felt powerless as a man, so in all his selfish needs, took it out on the smallest one in the family who wouldn’t dare fight back for a long time because she was too scared to hurt her mother.
She still had a lot of thing to learn and realize at the end of the novel, but like the author Allison said in the afterword, she meant to make the reader mad. Because there is no justice in a situation like this in the real world ever. And fiction is more believable than real life, and she was able to make some sense out of something that didn’t make any sense. The ending left the reader feeling just as confused and maybe hopeless as Bone had felt all her life and especially in the last few scenes where all she wanted to do was die. This is what makes this story an incredible one. Making sense out of nothing that should make sense, leaving the reader feeling injustice because we could feel Bone’s pain and really feel it, so when she got screwed over by almost everyone in her life that should have in any normal way made sense (mother, step father) the reader felt screwed. She allowed a deeper connection into the characters than many authors I’ve read ever had. She showed the most intimate thoughts and moments and concerns of life and love, through the eyes of an abused 12 year old, exactly as she saw it. And anyone who ever had been in a situation even moderately close to Bone’s would know that they were reading her thoughts as real and uncensored as they would get, no matter how weird or twisted her thoughts or situation had been. Allison didn’t hold a single thing back from her readers. And I does suck that apparently this book is banned in high schools, or public schools. But I loved knowing that Stephen King and his wife purchased a bunch of novels and donated them to a library to access this incredible book for free. That is a wonderful thing.
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