True Grit

“It was a good enough buy.”

As she describes her father’s death, Mattie takes a moment to justify her father’s business dealings. Notably, the dealings were “good enough” (116) rather than simply good. Mattie, her narration implies, would have done better. She cannot help but assert her personality and correct others, even when she is commenting on the final business deal of her father’s life.

“The wicked flee when none pursueth.”

Mattie is religious, both as a person and as a narrator. When she tells her story, she bolsters the narrative with selective quotes from the Bible. By referring to Proverbs and isolating this reference in a single sentence of its own, she gives her story a biblical precedence.

“Yarnell put a hand over my face but I pushed it aside. I would see it all.”

In Fort Smith, Mattie gradually becomes acquainted with her new responsibilities. She has made herself responsible for her family, so she decides that she must quickly mature. By refusing to look away from the hanging, she is deliberately exposing herself to the horrors of the world. This is the type of justice she wants for Chaney, so she must be willing to witness it.

“This happened once more later in the night and I got up, my feet freezing, and arranged Papa’s blankets and slicker over me as makeshift covers. Then I slept all right.”

Laying freezing in the bed as she tries to do right by her father’s memory, Mattie wraps herself in her dead father’s blanket. She insulates herself to the coldness by using his memory but, in doing so, exposes herself to the grief that she has not yet processed. Her practicality trumps her emotion, as the sentimentality of her father’s blanket is cast aside due to her immediate needs.

“You are an unnatural child. I will pay two hundred and twenty-five dollars and keep the gray horse.”

In her negotiation with Stonehill, Mattie’s precociousness and assertiveness are made explicit. Such demands, coming from such a young girl, seem “unnatural” (130), but Mattie forces others to deal with her on her own terms. For all this apparent unnaturalness, Stonehill cannot help but enter into negotiations. Even with an experienced horse trader like Stonehill, Mattie is able to hold her own.

“Well, for their part, those people up there said the judge was too hard and highhanded and too longwinded in his jury charges and they called his court ‘the Parker slaughterhouse.’”

Judge Parker was a historical figure. By blending together fiction and fact, True Grit suggests to the reader that the brutality of the Old West was not solely a fictional creation. Rooster may not be real, nor Mattie Ross, but the people they served, the laws they enforced, and the morality that prevailed were very much real.

“Confine your testimony to what you saw, Mr. Cogburn.”

When Rooster is telling his life story to Mattie, he is not a reliable narrator. He skips over his most brutal acts or denies knowledge of key parts of his life. This unreliability is evident in the court when his testimony is called into question. He is asked to be specific with his account, which is then picked apart by the lawyer. Rooster cannot be trusted with the truth about himself.

“They tell me you are a man with true grit.”

Mattie approaches Rooster because she wants a man with “true grit” (145). She frames this as a compliment, yet she has just witnessed Rooster in the courtroom, where he made a mockery of the legal system and nearly confessed to killing two men in cold blood. True grit, to Mattie, does not mean the authority to enforce the law. In The Search for True Grit, she is seeking a vessel for her vengeance and sees Rooster as the grittiest avatar of her own desire for revenge against Tom Chaney.

“All you can do with a rat is kill him or let him be. They don’t care nothing about papers.”

Rooster speaks about rats as though they were criminals. As with rats, he does not believe that criminals can be handled in a nonviolent manner. This is a worldview that Rooster has constructed for himself, a self-serving understanding of morality that excuses his brutal methods. Rooster was a criminal himself in the past so, by implication, he cares nothing about the papers which he is meant to serve. He has more in common with the criminals than the courts, even if he deludes himself otherwise.

“It was like something you might see today in a ‘Wild West’ show.”

Mattie is writing many years after her experiences with Rooster, knowing that—in later life—Rooster would become a fixture in a traveling Wild West show. She is writing with the benefit of foresight, knowing that the world these characters inhabit is about to change irrecoverably. The real past has been tamed by commoditization and the violence of the era turned into bait for nostalgic stage shows. Mattie wishes to remind the reader of the true brutality of the time, a brutality that has been stripped away by turning the past into entertainment.

“I realized I had made a mistake by opening up to this stranger.”

Mattie is only 14 years old, yet she has taken on many responsibilities. As the narrator, Mattie now reflects on the mistakes she made during this time. Ironically, she considers herself too naïve and too open, even if other people would have considered her forthright and precocious. Mattie learns to harden herself to the world, even as she has already become somewhat hardened beyond her years.

“No sir, that man has no chance any more.”

According to Rooster, honest men who adhere to the rules and laws have no chance of success. As with many of Rooster’s declarations, this statement is particularly self-serving. Rooster is not an honest man. He has a criminal past, and his enforcement of the law is rarely by the book. As such, his statement is reframing his actions as though he tried honesty and felt betrayed by the world rather than that he tried criminality and found himself a violent niche.

“Report has it that he rode by the light of the moon with Quantrill and Bloody Bill Anderson.”

From Stonehill, Mattie gains a different perspective on Rooster. According to the Colonel, Rooster was a part of the notoriously brutal nighttime raids that took place during the Civil War. He served under several of the conflict’s most notorious figures while fighting on the losing side. This alternative perspective on Rooster shows that Rooster may not be a reliable narrator of his own life. This fresh perspective forces Mattie to take everything Rooster tells her with additional scrutiny.

“Potter’s wife is fixing the eats. She is not what I call a good cook but she is good enough and she needs the money.”

Rooster may be a violent man, but he lives by his own code. This makeshift code of honor includes caring for the recently widowed friend of his wife, Potter. She has lost her husband and thus finds herself in difficult financial straits, so Rooster helps her by hiring her. He is doing right by his dead friend, he believes, but doing right does not include lying about her culinary talents.

“I put Papa’s heavy coat on over my own coat. I had to turn the cuffs back.”

Setting out on the journey to catch Tom Chaney, Mattie is confronted with the reality of her situation. She is so young to be burdened with the responsibilities of her father, as symbolized by his ill-fitting coat. She cannot fill out his coat, much less his duties. Yet Mattie rolls up the sleeves and forces herself to continue, refusing to make back down from a challenge.

“Two wicked boys were sitting on the edge of the porch laughing at the mule’s discomfort. One was white and the other was an Indian.”

True Grit suggests that cruelty is not specific to any particular race. The novel presents an egalitarian view of the world, in which every person is capable of brutality and violence from a young age. Rooster kicks both boys, enforcing his own kind of justice. He is more concerned about boys who would kick a mule than men who would shoot one another.

“You cannot judge by looks.”

LaBoeuf defends his horse by insisting that appearances should not be used as the basis for any judgment. All three, LaBoeuf, Mattie, and Rooster, would feel the same about themselves, even if they do not extend this same courtesy to others. They are more alike than they are willing to accept, to the point where they are all equally stubborn.

“I will see you are buried right, though the ground is hard.”

Rooster may not always operate according to the law, but he does live by his own informal code of ethics. He plays a key role in Moon’s death but promises to have Moon buried properly and his possessions sent to his brother. Rooster sticks to this, even if he tries to pass on the responsibility to Finch and tries to take some of Moon’s money for himself. This loose application of an informal ethical code suggests that Rooster is not the same as a lawless man like Chaney.

“What are bushwhackers?”

During the American Civil War, bushwhackers were irregular guerrilla fighters who engaged in ambushes, raids, and hit-and-run attacks, often operating outside the control of formal military units. Their guerrilla tactics made them difficult to combat and contributed to the brutal nature of the war in contested regions. Mattie knows none of this, as she did not fight in the Civil War, thus revealing her innocence. Rooster shows that he feels at least partly guilty for his past actions by hiding the truth from her. He does not want to shatter whatever traces of heroism she still sees in him.

“Ned does not go around killing people if he has no good reason. If he has a good reason he kills them.”

Ned Pepper is a notorious outlaw, but he does have some semblance of a moral code. His code does not align with the law, but, like Rooster’s own moral code, it separates him from the truly lawless and evil men like Tom Chaney. Rooster may not like Ned, but he can respect him on some level. At least in part, this respect is because he recognizes himself in Ned. But for a few chance events, Rooster might be in Ned’s position and vice versa.

“Now I am shot by a child.”

Tom Chaney reacts with disbelief when Mattie shoots him. Chaney lacks any remorse, so he cannot understand why Mattie would wish harm on him nor why he should be responsible for his father’s death. Chaney sees himself as the victim of terrible misfortune, as though the universe is absurdly conspiring against him. That he should be shot by a child is evidence of absurdity, he believes, rather than the way in which his actions would turn an innocent child into an attempted murderer.

“A man from Texas has no authority to fire at me.”

Ned is shocked that a Texas Ranger would fire at him. Ned may be an outlaw, but his basic understanding of the rules of law enforcement means that LaBoeuf—rather than Ned—is the person who is breaking the law. Ned is different from Tom Chaney in that he has some sense of right and wrong, even if this does not always line up with the actual law.

“When Blackie slowed again, Rooster took salt from his pocket and rubbed the wound with it and the pony leaped forward as before.”

Rooster is desperate to save Mattie, but his methods are limited to his own brutality. He rides Blackie to death, using cruel tricks to elicit every last bit of strength from Mattie’s beloved horse. Blackie dies so that Mattie can live, sacrificed by Rooster in brutal fashion. Mattie survives, but her innocence dies with Blackie.