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Fern is played by cast member Frances McDormand

Fern is incredibly neat and orderly with how she lives her life. Her van’s interior serves as a visual illustration of this aspect of her personality. As Fern beams with pride showing Linda May her set-up, we see how careful and detail oriented she is with her belongings. Everything has its place, and she takes great care of her things. Later on, Dave disrupts this order when he accidentally breaks her prized dishes from her father. It’s a moment that provides a deeper look at Fern’s psyche. For Fern, it’s not just broken dishes, it’s cracks in what she holds most dear – her memory of the past. Dave’s existence in her life threatens this as he seeks to get close to her despite her best efforts to keep him at arm’s length. Dave represents turning over a new leaf, letting go a bit more of her late husband Beau, and opening up to the possibility of finding love again. It’s this deep attachment for her husband that prevents her from risking new intimacy in a relationship with Dave, and she ultimately rejects most of his friendly invitations.  

Fern is fiercely independent, and this only becomes clearer as the film unfolds. She thrives when she’s living solo on the road with nothing holding her down. One scene in particular showcases this independence when she breaks off from a tour group at the Badlands National Park and runs through rock formations with a giddy childlike energy. When she’s alone in nature she is most uninhibited and at peace.  

Ironically, her outward independence is still held back by an inward attachment to her past. Through Fern, there is a complex relationship with grief and death. She wrestles not only with the death of Beau, but also her entire town and past life as a result of the recession. There’s a stubbornness in Fern that prevents her from leaving Empire, the town where she lived with Beau, out of fear that she will also leave behind what’s left of him. But Nomadland makes it very clear that life must go on, and one always has to keep moving. One early scene represents this concept so subtly, but it foreshadows Fern’s entire character arc. Fern tries her hardest to stay in Nevada, but try as she might, she’s unable to find work. Even after Linda May invites her to go to Quartzsite, Arizona, Fern remains stubborn and turns her down. But eventually, Fern must move on. The freezing temperatures and the lack of work make staying in snowy northern Nevada untenable, and she makes her way to Arizona to reunite with Linda May.

This foreshadows her ultimate evolution as a character who goes from having a white-knuckled grip on her past life with Beau to one who makes peace with his death and finally moves on from her life in Empire. Fern is never incredibly emotional on-screen until the very end when we see her sob quietly in the remains of the USG office in Empire when she returns. These tears feel therapeutic and bring closure to unresolved feelings as Fern finally lets go of the grief that has controlled her for far too long. By the film’s end, Fern marks a major change in her character as she gets rid of the storage unit in Empire that holds so many attachments to her past life. 

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