Most people don't like ambiguity. It makes them feel uncomfortable, uneasy, and insecure. In Woe to Live On, Daniel Woodrell soaks the reader in ambiguity, never letting them find stable ground to stand on. The plot teeters and winds, never heading in a sure direction. The characters are good people who are thrust into circumstances that make them murderers. The setting of this novel is the murky waters of a vague morality which always surfaces when chaos reigns.
Woe to Live On is told by Jake Roedell, a bushwhacker in Missouri during the American Civil War. Roedell and his fellow bushwhackers roam the countryside, aiding citizens loyal to the Confederacy and harassing, robbing, and killing those who sided with the Union.
This time and place is as ambiguous as you can get. Neighbors turn on neighbors. Family members fight among themselves. Even Jake's gang isn't black-and-white, as there are several fellow bushwhackers who would gladly kill him given the chance.
Jake himself is hard to get a read on. He is devoted to his adopted brother and best friend Jack, a fellow bushwhacker, but has turned his back on his father, who chose to side with the Union. Jake spares a former neighbor from execution, but casually shoots a young boy in the back because "pups make hounds." Contradictions like this abound with all the characters.
Again, Woodrell isn't afraid to make the reader feel uncomfortable. He's not trying to make you feel good about the characters or even the narrator. He's like a journalist, just reporting what he sees. It's up to the reader to decide what is right and what is wrong.
Woe to Live On is an interesting novel that explores the gray areas of the American Civil War, friendship, and nationalism. Woodrell presents a different kind of Western, one in which there aren't good guys and bad guys, but rather desperate people facing terrible choices.
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