How frequent are dramatic situations? How are they reached, by anticipation or surprise? Are the dramatic situations hinted at or are they subtle? How are they rendered, by dialogue or by description? Identify three examples.

This is only a short answer space but I can give you a general statement. The dramatic situations are tense and often bloody. The image of blood that appears in the title of the novel represents passion, life energy, and connection to family, culture and race. Winter in the blood suggests that the blood in the narrator runs thin; he suffers from a kind of spiritual and mental anemia. The blood image returns at a significant moment in part 4, after the narrator's sudden realization that Yellow Calf is his grandfather. This realization was “as though it was his blood in my veins that had told me.” In other words, Yellow Calf awakens the cultural and family blood that runs within the narrator, suggesting that the winter in the blood may be at an end.