True Grit By Mattie Ross

Later on the story Mattie experiences her grandfather?s death, which taught her to stand up for herself. After all of the hardships that Mattie and Grandfather faced out on their own, they came back to a Philadelphia very unalike the one they had left, and their coffeehouse home was no different. It was completely robbed of almost everything and shards of glass were everywhere. Although this did not stop two thieves from coming in and killing grandfather when he tried to fight back. Mattie did not take this well however. After Grandfather fainted, she gashed the robber?s shoulder with her granddad?s sword which sent him running down the street with Mattie chasing him close behind. This event clearly shows that Mattie learned to stand up for herself against higher authority, which is a big part of adulthood.

Will Mattie get to tag along with Rooster on the hunt for Tom Chaney? Rooster is very uneasy about letting Mattie, a child, accompany him for this manhunt. Although, Mattie is willing to pay Rooster one hundred dollars, he is still unwilling to budge on letting her join. The next morning Mattie arrives at the Chinese restaurant, where Rooster is staying, only to find out he has already set out on the long journey without her. Once Mattie realizes she has been left she jumps on her horse, Blackie, to chase after Rooster and LaBoeuf. When Mattie gets to the river and finds that the men have already crossed she meets a gentleman and asked him to take her across. This gentleman has specific orders to take Mattie back to the train station and send her on her way home. Mattie then knocks him in the head and makes her horse swim across the river to meet the men. When Mattie gets to the other side LaBoeuf jumps off his horse to beat her, at this moment

Throughout True Grit Mattie is shown to be obsessive, which is shown through her devotion throughout the novel. "That is my father. ' I stood there looking at him. What a waste! Tom Chaney! Would pay for this! I would not rest easy until that Louisiana cur was roasting and screaming in hell"(24). Mattie ultimately is enraged at the fact a drunken coward kills her father, She set 's out to find her father 's killer, since she has an obsession over her father 's death. Another piece of evidence from the text that shows this is when, a Sheriff tells Mattie about the toughest U.S Marshall, "The meanest one is Rooster Cogburn. He is a pitless man, double-tough, and fear don 't enter into his thinking. He loves to pull cork. Now L.T Quinn, he brings his prisoners alive... He will not plant evidence or abuse a prisoner. He is a straight as a string"(37). The Sheriff in this quote has just answered Mattie 's question on to where she could find one of the toughest U.S Marshall 's to track down her father 's killer, she then becomes obsessed with this man, and it become one of her goals to set out and find him.

In the book Mattie is definitely a strong character. When Taylor meets Mattie she is surprised. Back in Pittman, where Taylor is from a woman would never own and run a tire store all by herself. Mattie may not be gaining much

Mattie does not beat around the bush when it comes to justice. She has a fixed view on how law should be carried out against Tom Chaney and stops at nothing to achieve this. Put simply, Mattie wants him dead, and she wants him to know that he is dying as a result of him killing her father. This view and interpretation of justice closely resembles the “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” philosophy of the Code of Hammurabi where the life of Tom Chaney must be payed for

Mattie Ross clearly portrays the hero of a quest novel. To begin, a hero gets a call that leads them into their journey. The call happens as the basis for the task they wish to achieve. They tend to get the call which bases their entire adventure, and allows the character to become a hero. Mattie receives a call for adventure when hearing the news that Tom Chaney killed her father, Frank Ross. After hearing about her father’s death, Mattie will stop at nothing to get revenge on his killer. Not many people know Mattie’s father, so, Tom Chaney does not have a group of Marshals after him immediately. Mattie claims that her father “was just trying to do that short

In Ain’t No Makin’ It, author Jay MacLeod explores a study of two different groups of young males, the Hallway Hangers and the Brothers, in housing projects called Clarendon Heights. MacLeod explores these two extremely different groups over a long course of time to see how they develop from teenagers to adults. MacLeod comes to find that the Hallway Hangers, which is a group of mostly white men, are completely uninterested in education and completely interested in drugs and alcohol. These young men have no desire for a better life. The Brothers, on the contrary, are a group of mostly black men who believe in the American Dream, and will do anything to pull themselves out of poverty. They attend school and stay away from drugs and alcohol, with the hopes of achieving greatness one day. Through norms, values, and ideology, readers can understand MacLeod’s central findings in his study and see the effects of social reproduction.

“I said, ‘If you refuse to go I will have to shoot you.’ He went on with his work and said, ‘Oh? Then you had better cock your piece.’ I had forgotten about that. I pulled the hammer back with both thumbs. ‘All the way back till it locks,’ said Chaney. ‘I know how to do it,’ said I. When it was ready I said, ‘You will not go with me?’ ‘I think not,’ said he. ‘It is just the other way around. You are going with me.’ I pointed the revolver at his belly and shot him down.” Over the course of this passage, Mattie’s confidence grows. She started out nervous with running into Tom Chaney but in the discussion, she decides to shoot him. This passage shows the reader just how much Mattie has grown. When Rooster killed Moon, Mattie was extremely uncomfortable with that death but now she had grown to the point where she tried to murder a man. Well, it was not just a random man. It was her father’s murderer. Although this was the whole point of the journey; it still reveals development in her character. In the beginning, she expected Rooster to shoot Tom Chaney but now Mattie had become ready to kill her father’s slaughterer. The whole novel prepared for this moment; the moment where Mattie finally stood up to the man who single-handedly ‘blew up’ her life. This passage was probably the most momentous part of the book since it was when Mattie was able to hold her own to get her

Mattie is the older character in this book that was owned “Jesus is Lord Tires” and was a character that acted as a mother to multiple characters. “She looked at me the way Mama would have,” (Kingsolver 252). This quote was found near the end of the book that signified Mattie looking at Taylor and Taylor observing that look and thinking that it is similar to her real mother’s. Mattie gave some money to Taylor for the trip and Taylor refused to take it, so Mattie said that it was for everyone in the car and gave her the look that reminded Taylor of her biological mother. “’I’ve got some peanut butter crackers,’ Mattie said leaning over Turtle. ‘Will she eat peanut butter?’,” (Kingsolver 252). Mattie seemed worried about Turtle and offered her something to eat. She acted as a mother figure to Turtle because she fed her and gave her more food when Turtle hinted for it. Mattie was the one that fit as a mother figure to a lot of characters in the book. She was the person that led a sanctuary and was the one who took care of the many.

1. In the book True Grit, Portis makes Mattie cold and narrow minded. She shows her signs of being both of these by rolling up Rooster's cigarette, as well as when she shot Tom in the arm. If she had shown any spiritual sensibility, she wouldn't have done any of that. All that Mattie is thinking of is getting revenge for her father. Mattie's religious beliefs are put to the side when she tries to find Tom.

The kind of community policing and the justice system of the Indian Territory at the time draws several parallels to the sense of vengeance in the Portis’ novel. All throughout the novel, the quest for a community in dire need of social order is only met with an ineffective policing system where vengeance is the order of the day. As Butler (386) has stated, Mattie’s fury over the death of her father and her desire to avenge her father’s death in a silent manner clearly depicts the society’s loss of trust in the law enforcement agencies of the late 1800s Oklahoma Indian Territory. By contrast,

Mattie should go to the Territory because she proved that she can handle the hardships that she will face by showing her tenacity. Mattie displays her tenacity in a scene where Rooster, the marshall that was hired to take on the case that Mattie wants to embark on, is forcefully trying to indicate the fact that the trip will be dangerous and that Mattie shouldn’t go with him and that she should leave him alone, and that she will only be a distraction. Mattie is insisting that she must go and she can handle it and have done such in other situations. Rooster says, “I cannot go up against Ned Pepper’s band and try to look after a baby at one and the same time.” Mattie responds, “I am not baby. You will not have to worry about me.” Rooster replies,

In the novel True Grit, Mattie Ross is a fourteen years old girl who has decided to “leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood” (9). The theme of revenge appears in a particular type of plot commonly found in western stories, which are called revenge stories. In this novel, the main character is fully dedicated to her goal, which is to avenge her father’s killing. Compared to Rooster, who is helping Mattie for money and compared to Laboeuf who is aiming for justice, Mattie’s motive is revenge. However, she knows that her goal is different from the two others, but she also knows that the end goal is the same. She wants the killer of Frank Ross, Tom Chaney, to pay for his crime. She wants to bring him back to Fort Smith, where she wants to see him being hanged. She wants justice to be given and she “[has] hopes that the marshals will get him soon” (p.34). However, her desire for revenge is bigger than it is for justice. She “intend to kill Tom Chaney with [her fathers gun] if the law fails to do so” (p.63). She also wants Tom Chaney to know that he is being punished for killing her father. At the end of the adventure, Mattie looses her arm, which is a consequence of her revenge. This shows that revenge is brutal and that it has a cost and consequences. Thus, the theme of revenge is obviously a central them of the

Fourteen-year-old Mattie Ross has just lost her father to the hands of Tom Chaney, who robs her father and flees. Mattie is determined to avenge her father’s death and see that Chaney dies before her eyes. She hires the marshal Rooster Cogburn, “a pitiless man, double-tough, and fear don’t enter into his thinking.”, and Texas marshal LaBoeuf comes along as well. Together the trio journey together to find Tom Caney, but it is Mattie that has the most guts; she has true grit.

Voice-overs, sounds and word choice are the essential tools the director applies to give the message that bondage destroys human dignity. Solomon starts off speaking about his life, his children and his wife. He is portrayed by other characters as the top violin player. He is a free man most importantly. This gives the audience the contrast between his first life and the life to come. Once captured, the voice-over switches to the master that bought Solomon. He gives a speech about Christianity and how through the Bible slavery is acceptable. Throughout the trailer he becomes more disgusting and ruthless with his words and what he says. “In seeking to dehumanize people, chattel slavery corrupts everyone within the system, from heroic slaves to humane masters” (Stauffer 318). McQueen’s brutal and pitiless words express the corruption inside the slavery system and the effects words from the masters have on the slaves. The director acknowledges the effects of words on a person’s dignity with powerful voice-overs[AM9] .