True Grit Character Analysis
March 7, 2015
English Composition 2
Casey Baker
Paper 4
Analysis of Charles Portis’s novel “True Grit”
Some people would argue that in the novel True Grit the main character, Mattie Ross, is selfish and naïve. I think that Mattie is brave, intelligent, and focused on her goals.
I think that Mattie was very brave; she took on and witnessed many things that would be foreign to all other fourteen-year-old girls. She says “perhaps you can imagine how painful it was for us to go directly from that appalling scene to the undertaker’s where my father lay dead”(P.23); in this line she is referring to witnessing a hanging. Her next words are “nevertheless it had to be done”(P.23). Mattie rarely complains about anything; she does what she has to do and shows no signs of weakness or fear. Towards the very end of the novel Mattie is stuck in the pit and is faced with many treacherous obstacles, yet again, none seem to faze her. She first discovers that her arm is broken and says “When I tried to use my left hand to push myself out of the hole I saw with a …show more content…
She goes off with Rooster and Laboeuf, two Marshalls, and thinks she can hang with them. They are grown men and she is only a fourteen-year-old girl. There is a line in the novel, where Moon questions her, saying in a very derogatory tone, “What is this girl doing here?”(P.131), this implies that obviously she doesn’t fit in, nor belong. I think that naivety is a characteristic of Mattie throughout the novel, but once you finish reading the final page that characteristic disappears. What I mean by “disappears” is that Mattie did have moments of naivety, but once you finish reading the novel and realize that, while she managed to not die, she was rewarded for her hard work. I think all the times we as readers thought she was being naïve were actually times when she showed great
English Composition 2
Casey Baker
Paper 4
Analysis of Charles Portis’s novel “True Grit”
Some people would argue that in the novel True Grit the main character, Mattie Ross, is selfish and naïve. I think that Mattie is brave, intelligent, and focused on her goals.
I think that Mattie was very brave; she took on and witnessed many things that would be foreign to all other fourteen-year-old girls. She says “perhaps you can imagine how painful it was for us to go directly from that appalling scene to the undertaker’s where my father lay dead”(P.23); in this line she is referring to witnessing a hanging. Her next words are “nevertheless it had to be done”(P.23). Mattie rarely complains about anything; she does what she has to do and shows no signs of weakness or fear. Towards the very end of the novel Mattie is stuck in the pit and is faced with many treacherous obstacles, yet again, none seem to faze her. She first discovers that her arm is broken and says “When I tried to use my left hand to push myself out of the hole I saw with a …show more content…
She goes off with Rooster and Laboeuf, two Marshalls, and thinks she can hang with them. They are grown men and she is only a fourteen-year-old girl. There is a line in the novel, where Moon questions her, saying in a very derogatory tone, “What is this girl doing here?”(P.131), this implies that obviously she doesn’t fit in, nor belong. I think that naivety is a characteristic of Mattie throughout the novel, but once you finish reading the final page that characteristic disappears. What I mean by “disappears” is that Mattie did have moments of naivety, but once you finish reading the novel and realize that, while she managed to not die, she was rewarded for her hard work. I think all the times we as readers thought she was being naïve were actually times when she showed great