The Winter People

“I had heard whispers, rumors of sleepers called back from the land of the dead by grieving husbands and wives, but was certain they only existed in the stories old women liked to tell each other while they folded laundry or stitched stockings—something to pass the time, and to make any eavesdropping children hurry home before dark.

I had been sure, up until then, that God in his infinite wisdom would not have allowed such an abomination.”

This quote from Sara’s journal establishes the theme of The Intersection of Folklore and Reality. Sara notes that she had heard “rumors” of sleepers as a child, but she had dismissed them as an old wives’ tale. This parallels Ruthie’s dismissal of local folklore as a child. They are both forced to reckon with these understandings when they come into contact with sleepers. Sara describes the sleeper she sees as an “abomination,” because it defies known natural laws of life and death. It is monstrous. Despite this knowledge, Sara is determined to also turn her daughter into a sleeper.

“If I close my eyes even now, I can still see my Gertie’s face, feel her sugary breath on my cheek. I can so vividly recall our last morning together, hear her saying, ‘If snow melts down to water, does it still remember being snow?’”

This quote from Sara’s journal is rich in sensory detail. Sara feels, sees, and hears her child even though Gertie has passed. It is as if her grief is causing her to be haunted. The question Gertie asks foreshadows the changes Gertie herself will go through when she transforms into a sleeper. She will change form, but hold on to some of her memories of being a human.

“‘Winter people?’ ‘That’s what I call them,’ I say, turning to face her. ‘The people who are stuck between here and there, waiting. It reminds me of winter, how everything is all pale and cold and full of nothing, and all you can do is wait for spring.’”

This quote reveals the meaning of the title of the novel. “The winter people” is what Gertie calls the sleepers. This is a surprising and supernatural moment in the novel, because it suggests that Gertie herself has had contact with the winter people, perhaps through her dreams. Although the text is ambiguous, it suggests Gertie has supernatural powers.

“The West Hall Triangle, people called it. There was talk of satanic cults, a twisted killer, a door to another dimension, and, of course, aliens, like Buzz and his friends believed.

Ruthie thought it was all a crock of shit.”

This quote describes The Intersection of Folklore and Reality in West Hall. It shows how people interpret supernatural and strange events in the context of folklore with which they are familiar. For instance, there is indeed a “twisted killer” in West Hall—Gertie. Ruthie’s use of the slightly vulgar expression “a crock of shit” is suggestive of her teenage disposition and associated certainty.

“It felt like a funny joke, a book Gary had planted there for her to find right now: This is what I’ve become, a visitor.”

Amelia published Sara’s journal under the name Visitors from the Other Side. In this quote, Katherine draws a connection between this phrase and the feeling she has that her late husband, Gary, is a “visitor” in Katherine’s life.

“She didn’t like being in the closet, even with the door open. Small, tight places had always freaked her out. In her worst nightmares, she was trapped in tiny rooms, or having to wriggle through narrow passageways she could barely fit through. And she always got stuck and woke up screaming, breathless.”

Ruthie suffers from claustrophobia and recurring nightmares related to her experience as a small child when her parents were killed in the caves by Gertie. Her description of the recurring nightmare that she describes here, as “having to wriggle through narrow passageways,” foreshadows and aligns with what Ruthie is forced to do in the caves to find her mom: “wriggling along sideways” (340). The evocative language, “screaming, breathless,” creates a sense of dread and terror.

“I do not tell him that I no longer wish to get through it. That what I want most is to sneak away and throw myself down into the bottom of that well so I can be with my Gertie once more.”

This quote highlights Sara’s desperation and her willingness to do anything to see her daughter again. She fantasizes about taking the extreme measure of dying by suicide. This is illustrative of The Impact of Loss and Grief on the Human Psyche.

“You always say that death is not an ending, but a beginning. That the dead cross over to the world of the spirits and are surrounding us still.”

This quote is representative of Auntie’s belief system and how she views life and death. It is a lesson about the sleepers and representative of The Intersection of Folklore and Reality in the novel. It explains why characters, including Martin and Ruthie, feel at various points that they are being watched—they are surrounded by spirits.

“‘Maybe it’s just a coincidence?’ The words felt hollow. But some part of her brain, the part that held dearly to all that was rational and made sense, couldn’t let her accept the truth.”

Ruthie originally thought that superstition and folklore were a “crock of shit.” However, when she is presented with evidence that the bakery she dreams about is real, she is forced to come to terms with the possibility that things are more complicated than she realized. Nevertheless, she holds “dearly to all that was rational,” implying that if she lets herself believe in impossible things, she will fall off a metaphorical cliff.

“She had that feeling she got when she was doing her art and suddenly discovered the missing piece that ties everything together: a tingling in the back of her neck, a crazy buzzed-rush of a feeling that spread through her whole body. She didn’t understand the role that Sara Harrison Shea, the ring Gary had given her, or the book he had hidden would play, but she knew that this was important, and that she had to give herself over to it and see where it might lead.”

An impact that grief has on many of the characters is that it leads them into mental instability even as it spurs them to action. In this quote, Katherine describes her desire to understand the circumstances of her husband’s death as “a crazy buzzed-rush” feeling and she resolves to “give herself over to it.” This language suggests that Katherine is ultimately unable to control her actions driven by her grief.

“They think that there’s something out there, in the woods at the edge of town, something evil, something that can’t be explained. There have been a lot of stories over the years, folks who’ve gone missing, people who say they see strange lights or hear crying sounds, tales of a pale figure roaming the woods.”

A key aspect of folklore is that much of it is passed down orally, rather than written. In this quote, the local bookstore owner conveys the local folklore shared between the townspeople of West Hall. It is later revealed in The Winter People that their folklore has a grain of truth in it: The “pale figure” they see is Gertie, the sleeper. These ominous stories from the bookseller create a mood of mystery and dread.

“Head spinning, phone clenched in her hand, she thought about chemical elements, pink cupcakes, green bears; about the ways everything was connected. Maybe it wasn’t all so random.”

In this quote, Ruthie is shocked and processing the information she has learned from Candace about her biological parents. The list of seemingly disparate items—“chemical elements, pink cupcakes, green bears”—conveys the “spinning” feeling that Ruthie is experiencing, as if she is being turned around while trying to understand what is going on. They each represent a different facet of the mystery: The “chemical elements” refer to a memory Ruthie has of her father telling her that everything in the universe is made of the same elements; the “pink cupcakes” refers to the Fitzgerald’s Bakery Ruthie dreams about; and the “green bears” is the green teddy bear Ruthie had as a small child and lost.

“I knew what Martin would say if I told him—what anyone in his right mind would say—but I didn’t care. I didn’t care if I was going mad, or if all of this was a figment of my imagination. My Gertie was back. Nothing else mattered.”

This quote is illustrative of both The Impact of Loss and Grief on the Human Psyche and The Strength of Parent-Child Relationships. Sara is so emotionally destabilized by her grief that she recognizes her belief that Gertie has returned could be interpreted as mental illness. Nevertheless, she is so grateful to see her daughter again that she is indifferent to the possibility that, rather than being a supernatural event, Gertie’s presence is “a figment of [her] imagination.”

“He’d been so worried about her last night. He was sure, in those dark moments, that Sara had slipped away from him completely.

But there had been something in that closet, hadn’t there? Something scrabbling, trying to get out.

Mice. A squirrel, maybe.”

This quote illustrates the way the mind tries to rationalize supernatural occurrences. This is similar to how Ruthie tries to justify the strange things that happen before the truth of the existence of sleepers becomes undeniable. Martin is having a dialogue with himself in which he is attempting to talk himself out of a supernatural explanation for what is going on.

“I tried to recall the Sara I’d been weeks ago, when Gertie was alive. It was true, I had become a different person. The world had shifted. My eyes were open now.”

Grief radically changes people. Sara had once been a happy, strong woman. Following the death of her child, even she recognizes that she has “become a different person.” However, in a supernatural twist, it is not just Sara who has changed but her understanding of the entire “world.”

“Ruthie thought again of all her mother’s warnings throughout the years—Never open the door. She thought of Little Red Riding Hood being tricked by the wolf in Granny’s clothes.”

Before Ruthie’s mother disappeared, she read Fawn Little Red Riding Hood. This tale is symbolic in the story because it is an example of The Intersection of Folklore and Reality. Although it is a folk tale, the story contains a real warning of the dangers that can lurk in the woods, dangers like those the characters in the story face.

“Some things are out of our control. Sometimes terrible things happen and there’s not a damn thing we can do to stop them. But here she was, given a chance to make a difference. She was going to save those girls.”

This quote contains an allusion to the loss Katherine has suffered in her life. Her son died of leukemia and her husband died in a car crash. These were events totally out of Katherine’s control. As a result, Katherine is motivated to intervene to help Ruthie and Fawn, who are facing mortal peril to regain control over life (and death).

“[W]hen she was a little kid, she used to have fantasies about Mom and Dad not being her real parents; she’d imagine a rich couple, a king and queen of some far-off country she’d never heard of, coming to claim her as their own and ferry her off into the life she was meant to be leading, a life that didn’t involve cleaning out the chicken coop and wearing hand-me-down clothes. But now that she had finally gotten her wish, it didn’t feel like a magical new beginning. It felt like a punch in the gut, hard and heavy.”

This is an example of irony. As a child, Ruthie dreamed of living in a folk tale instead of living her real, hard-scrabble life. However, once she actually finds herself living in a folktale come to life, she discovers it is a nightmare. She has a visceral reaction to the realization that she was adopted.

“‘Auntie!’ I screamed, staring into the flames for signs of movement. There was none. But then, from behind the roar of the fire, I heard a voice. It was Auntie, calling my name.”

This is a dramatic, almost cinematic scene. The “roar of the fire” and the plaintive call of Auntie for Sara are sensory details that establish a tragic scene. The story leaves it ambiguous as to how Auntie escaped the fire. Sara sees no “signs of movement” from within the flames, which suggests the possibility that Auntie used magic to escape.

“Lucius says I am suffering from acute melancholia. He explained that Gertie’s death was too much for me to bear and that it has caused me to lose touch with reality. He said that in this state I am a danger to myself and others. I bit my tongue until it bled, knowing that if I argued it would be a further sign of my supposed madness.”

This quote is an example of the way that grief, and particularly women’s grief, is pathologized. Instead of the men in her life listening to her and comforting her, Lucius presumes to explain Sara’s state of mind to her and diagnoses her with “acute melancholia.” Melancholia is an old-fashioned diagnosis for what today would likely be described as depression.

“The dead can return. Not just as spirits, but as living, breathing beings. I have beheld the proof with my own eyes: my beloved Gertie, awakened.”

In this quote, Sara describes enthusiastically her discovery that death is not a permanent state but rather can be reversed. She uses old-fashioned, Biblical language to describe this, stating, “I have beheld the proof with my own eyes.” This makes Sara sound like a zealot, newly converted to the power the sleeper ritual holds.

“We can be together again, he told her. We can bring Austin back. The idea of it hit her like a cannonball in the chest, so heavy and unexpected that she lost her balance and fell over in the snow.”

Throughout the novel, Katherine has “heard” her late husband Gary’s voice. It is not clear whether this is her imagination or actual messages he is sending her from beyond the grave. This ambiguity creates two possibilities: Either Gary is urging Katherine to resurrect him so “[they] can be together again,” or Katherine is so lost and desperate in her grief that she simply believes this is what he wants her to do.

“It was all there—Sara’s story, Auntie’s story. Ruthie’s own story, even.

The story of a little girl named Gertie who died.

Whose mother loved her too much to let her go.

So she brought her back.

Only the world she came back to wasn’t the same.

She wasn’t the same.”

Ruthie and Fawn resolve to rid themselves of the instructions for how to complete the sleeper ritual by throwing it into the well. As they do so, Ruthie sums up everything that has happened to everyone connected to this story. She recognizes that Gertie is a tragic figure who was brought back to a world that “wasn’t the same,” and that didn’t have space for her.