Brief Summary Of The Book 'True Grit' By Charles Portis

What were you doing at the age of fourteen? Do you ever think you could avenge the death of a family member at such a young age? As for me, at fourteen I was in middle school and didn't have a worry in the world. Well, except the homework we had and my grades, which were slowly dropping but I gritted my teeth worked hard and made it through. Although, in the book "True Grit" by Charles Portis the character Mattie Ross isn't your average teenage girl. In the late 1870's Mattie and her family live happily in Yell County, Arkansas. One day they suffer a great loss and Mattie takes it upon herself to seek the man who caused her family so much pain. According to google the definition of grit is having perseverance, courage and, passion. The main character Mattie shows how she has grit in a lot of different ways but, the character Tom Chaney shows no grit at all. My last example is Rooster Cogburn, he seems to have a lot more grit than I had thought when I first started reading this book. First, I'd like to tell you a little bit more about

In the very beginning, after buying ponies at Fort Smith he shoots Frank. Mattie claims, “My father was not armed at the time. Tom Chaney raised his rifle and shot him in the head, killing him instantly."(Portis 16) That wasn't a very courageous move, killing a man who didn't have any kind of weapon to defend himself. Towards the end of the story, after he and Mattie run into each other at the river, he fights her as if she is a grown man. Portis writes, “Chaney flung the heavy piece of wood and it caught me in the chest and laid me out backwards. He came splashing across the creek and he jerked me up by my coat and commenced slapping me and cursing me and my father."(Portis 180) Tom has absolutely no apathy for children let alone women.In these ways Tom Chaney is obviously a gritless