Mark Thomas's Blog - Posts Tagged "mattie-ross"
True Grit, by Charles Portis
Theoretically, first person narrators limit the effectiveness of a book. All humans have flaws so a believable first-person narrator must also possess a reasonable amount of selfish blindness. That’s dangerous, because a character’s racism or long-windedness, or stupidity could infect the book and make it an unpleasant reading experience. Creative writing classes call it “the imitative fallacy.”
TRUE GRIT, by Charles Portis, avoids the potential trap. Mattie Ross is certainly limited in her understanding of the world, but she isn’t devious, so readers easily see past her prejudices. Reading Portis’ book is like listening to a strong witness in a trial; the evidence is compelling, but you are always aware it is just one person’s version of events, that there is an over-arching truth.
TRUE GRIT is set in post civil war Arkansas. Mattie’s father is killed by a hired hand, Tom Chaney, while on a stock-buying trip. Chaney escaped with Mr. Ross’ horse and bankroll, and fourteen-year-old Mattie is determined to make him pay. She hires a US marshal named Rooster Cogburn to help her track him down.
That’s the plot.
The reading enjoyment comes from Mattie’s re-telling, starting with her decision to hire Rooster Cogburn. She asks the Fort Smith sheriff to recommend a federal marshal, and he gives an assessment of the people available: “William Waters is the best tracker. . .The meanest one is Rooster Cogburn. He is a pitiless man . . . Now L.T. Quinn he brings his prisoners in alive. . . He will not plant evidence or abuse a prisoner. He is straight as a string. Yes, I will say Quinn is about the best they have.” Mattie responds, “where can I find this Rooster?”
There is a lot of deadpan comedy like that in the book and it reminds me of Christopher Boone’s narration in THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME. Christopher interviews his neighbors, trying to find out who killed Wellington the poodle. One man answers his door and Christopher reports that his t-shirt says “Beer: helping ugly people have sex for two thousand years.”
Christopher’s autism doesn’t allow him to appreciate jokes, it’s all for the reader’s benefit.
The blurb on my edition of TRUE GRIT declares that Mattie is “eccentric, cool, funny and unflinching.” The description makes her seem like a spunky kid from an amateur production of ANNIE, but I think she is a lot like Christopher Boone, and if she were a student in one of my English classes, she would probably have a similar special needs designation.
Mattie is cleverer than most adults. Like Christopher Boone, she has a facility with figures that goes beyond mere arithmetic skills. Mattie has an intuitive understanding of accounting practices, but doesn’t value common politeness, she will blurt out her feelings, rather than filter or control them. She has a favorite insult word for people or things that irritate her: “trash.” She uses it a dozen times, to describe dirt in her porridge or the wild west celebrity Frank James.
Mattie is stubborn, and will insist on getting her way, even when it isn’t in her best interest. Her social interactions are transactional, and she doesn’t have any interest in romantic relationships, or marriage. Most significantly, her emotional reactions are blunted. The most obvious example is the extremely casual reference to her amputated arm near the end of the book. (That incident is left out of the movie versions because it feels so bizarre.)
I don’t mean to diminish Mattie with some half-baked educational designation. But saying that Mattie is “unflinching” implies that she is making a behavioral choice, when I think it’s more honest to say she is in the grip of a mania or compulsion. And is she really “funny?” I think Mattie, like Christopher Boone, doesn’t have a sense of humor. The NOVEL is “funny” because Mattie says unexpected things and occasionally gets the best of people who deserve to be bested.
In the same way, I don’t think of her as “eccentric.” Her unusual dress isn’t a stylistic choice, it is necessitated by the cold and her limited resources. Asserting herself in front of adults is certainly odd, considering she’s a young woman in the late 19th century; pursuing her father’s killer is even more unusual. But there is no whimsy involved, no deliberate flouting of convention. On the first page of the novel, Mattie says, “it did not seem so strange then.” Mattie is just doing what comes naturally.
To me, Mattie’s actions are more like responses to stimulus than conscious choices. When Cogburn and LaBeouf won’t let her cross the river on a ferry, she makes her pony swim across. Some people might call that “eccentric,” or “unflinching,” but I would characterize it as an insect-like tropism.
Mattie says she has “never been one to flinch or crawfish when faced with an unpleasant task.” She knows she is different from other people but tries to characterize that difference as something positive.
I’m not so sure.
Her dispassionate descriptions of violence make her sound like the anti-social criminals she is chasing. “Quincy brought the bowie knife down on Moon’s cuffed hand and chopped off four fingers which flew up before my eyes like chips from a log … My thought was: ‘I am better out of this.’ I tumbled backward and sought a place of safety on the dirt floor.”
One criminal hacks off another’s fingers to stop him from confessing. Mattie is reminded of something inanimate: “chips from a log," Then she calmly ducks out of danger. The only time Mattie gets excited during that encounter is when Rooster finds a California gold piece in Quincy’s pocket. Mattie cries, “That’s my father’s gold piece! Let me have it!”
In TRUE GRIT, Mattie is an adult, telling her version of a story made famous by the press. Supposedly, she is upset by incorrect factual details and wants to set the record straight. But it’s unclear what the press misrepresented. The only example Mattie gives is that her father was wounded in the “terrible fight” at Chickamauga, not the “scrap” at Elkhorn Tavern. That’s what I mean about her having a “blunted affect.” The location of her father’s war injury, and an offhand characterization of a battle as a “scrap” have absolutely nothing to do with her pursuit of Tom Chaney, but Mattie gets huffy about it. “I think I am in a position to know the facts.” Mattie has a lot of trouble assigning proper value to people and things.
That moral flatness is obvious when Mattie talks about her father’s killing. Tom Chaney shoots Frank Ross in the head, steals his purse, his horse, and two gold pieces that were hidden in his belt. Frank Ross’s murder was obviously the most serious offence, but Mattie harps on the two gold pieces throughout the novel. “They were a marriage gift from my grandfather Spurling in Montery, California.”
Okay, the little nuggets have sentimental value. But in the first chapter, Mattie mentions her father being shot twice and mentions the gold pieces being stolen three times. As the novel ends, Mattie points out that the second California gold piece was never recovered, and the one she retrieved from Quincy was lost “when our house burned. We found no trace of it in the ashes.”
To be fair, Frank Ross gets a mention in the last sentence of the novel: “This ends my true account of how I avenged Frank Ross’s blood over in the Choctaw nation when the snow was on the ground.” But her father’s death is in the middle of a list that includes Mattie's actions, the location and the weather.
TRUE GRIT is a fantastic novel, but I don’t find Mattie “funny” or “eccentric” or “cool” or “unflinching,” I find her somewhat sad.
TRUE GRIT, by Charles Portis, avoids the potential trap. Mattie Ross is certainly limited in her understanding of the world, but she isn’t devious, so readers easily see past her prejudices. Reading Portis’ book is like listening to a strong witness in a trial; the evidence is compelling, but you are always aware it is just one person’s version of events, that there is an over-arching truth.
TRUE GRIT is set in post civil war Arkansas. Mattie’s father is killed by a hired hand, Tom Chaney, while on a stock-buying trip. Chaney escaped with Mr. Ross’ horse and bankroll, and fourteen-year-old Mattie is determined to make him pay. She hires a US marshal named Rooster Cogburn to help her track him down.
That’s the plot.
The reading enjoyment comes from Mattie’s re-telling, starting with her decision to hire Rooster Cogburn. She asks the Fort Smith sheriff to recommend a federal marshal, and he gives an assessment of the people available: “William Waters is the best tracker. . .The meanest one is Rooster Cogburn. He is a pitiless man . . . Now L.T. Quinn he brings his prisoners in alive. . . He will not plant evidence or abuse a prisoner. He is straight as a string. Yes, I will say Quinn is about the best they have.” Mattie responds, “where can I find this Rooster?”
There is a lot of deadpan comedy like that in the book and it reminds me of Christopher Boone’s narration in THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME. Christopher interviews his neighbors, trying to find out who killed Wellington the poodle. One man answers his door and Christopher reports that his t-shirt says “Beer: helping ugly people have sex for two thousand years.”
Christopher’s autism doesn’t allow him to appreciate jokes, it’s all for the reader’s benefit.
The blurb on my edition of TRUE GRIT declares that Mattie is “eccentric, cool, funny and unflinching.” The description makes her seem like a spunky kid from an amateur production of ANNIE, but I think she is a lot like Christopher Boone, and if she were a student in one of my English classes, she would probably have a similar special needs designation.
Mattie is cleverer than most adults. Like Christopher Boone, she has a facility with figures that goes beyond mere arithmetic skills. Mattie has an intuitive understanding of accounting practices, but doesn’t value common politeness, she will blurt out her feelings, rather than filter or control them. She has a favorite insult word for people or things that irritate her: “trash.” She uses it a dozen times, to describe dirt in her porridge or the wild west celebrity Frank James.
Mattie is stubborn, and will insist on getting her way, even when it isn’t in her best interest. Her social interactions are transactional, and she doesn’t have any interest in romantic relationships, or marriage. Most significantly, her emotional reactions are blunted. The most obvious example is the extremely casual reference to her amputated arm near the end of the book. (That incident is left out of the movie versions because it feels so bizarre.)
I don’t mean to diminish Mattie with some half-baked educational designation. But saying that Mattie is “unflinching” implies that she is making a behavioral choice, when I think it’s more honest to say she is in the grip of a mania or compulsion. And is she really “funny?” I think Mattie, like Christopher Boone, doesn’t have a sense of humor. The NOVEL is “funny” because Mattie says unexpected things and occasionally gets the best of people who deserve to be bested.
In the same way, I don’t think of her as “eccentric.” Her unusual dress isn’t a stylistic choice, it is necessitated by the cold and her limited resources. Asserting herself in front of adults is certainly odd, considering she’s a young woman in the late 19th century; pursuing her father’s killer is even more unusual. But there is no whimsy involved, no deliberate flouting of convention. On the first page of the novel, Mattie says, “it did not seem so strange then.” Mattie is just doing what comes naturally.
To me, Mattie’s actions are more like responses to stimulus than conscious choices. When Cogburn and LaBeouf won’t let her cross the river on a ferry, she makes her pony swim across. Some people might call that “eccentric,” or “unflinching,” but I would characterize it as an insect-like tropism.
Mattie says she has “never been one to flinch or crawfish when faced with an unpleasant task.” She knows she is different from other people but tries to characterize that difference as something positive.
I’m not so sure.
Her dispassionate descriptions of violence make her sound like the anti-social criminals she is chasing. “Quincy brought the bowie knife down on Moon’s cuffed hand and chopped off four fingers which flew up before my eyes like chips from a log … My thought was: ‘I am better out of this.’ I tumbled backward and sought a place of safety on the dirt floor.”
One criminal hacks off another’s fingers to stop him from confessing. Mattie is reminded of something inanimate: “chips from a log," Then she calmly ducks out of danger. The only time Mattie gets excited during that encounter is when Rooster finds a California gold piece in Quincy’s pocket. Mattie cries, “That’s my father’s gold piece! Let me have it!”
In TRUE GRIT, Mattie is an adult, telling her version of a story made famous by the press. Supposedly, she is upset by incorrect factual details and wants to set the record straight. But it’s unclear what the press misrepresented. The only example Mattie gives is that her father was wounded in the “terrible fight” at Chickamauga, not the “scrap” at Elkhorn Tavern. That’s what I mean about her having a “blunted affect.” The location of her father’s war injury, and an offhand characterization of a battle as a “scrap” have absolutely nothing to do with her pursuit of Tom Chaney, but Mattie gets huffy about it. “I think I am in a position to know the facts.” Mattie has a lot of trouble assigning proper value to people and things.
That moral flatness is obvious when Mattie talks about her father’s killing. Tom Chaney shoots Frank Ross in the head, steals his purse, his horse, and two gold pieces that were hidden in his belt. Frank Ross’s murder was obviously the most serious offence, but Mattie harps on the two gold pieces throughout the novel. “They were a marriage gift from my grandfather Spurling in Montery, California.”
Okay, the little nuggets have sentimental value. But in the first chapter, Mattie mentions her father being shot twice and mentions the gold pieces being stolen three times. As the novel ends, Mattie points out that the second California gold piece was never recovered, and the one she retrieved from Quincy was lost “when our house burned. We found no trace of it in the ashes.”
To be fair, Frank Ross gets a mention in the last sentence of the novel: “This ends my true account of how I avenged Frank Ross’s blood over in the Choctaw nation when the snow was on the ground.” But her father’s death is in the middle of a list that includes Mattie's actions, the location and the weather.
TRUE GRIT is a fantastic novel, but I don’t find Mattie “funny” or “eccentric” or “cool” or “unflinching,” I find her somewhat sad.
