Rooster Cogburn Character Analysis

Heroes are often plastic characters that only know how to be a hero and nothing else. They do not have any other qualities about them and are one dimensional. These types of characters can only show up in fictional stories and never appear in the real world. The only kind of heroes that do show up in the real world are the ones that still make mistakes and mess up a few times, but that is because we are human and that is what humans do. Rooster Cogburn having qualities of a buffoon and a hero, makes True Grit more realistic than if he were flawless. Rooster is a buffoon by being foolish and not thinking before acting. As Rooster and Mattie are talking about their hunt for Chaney, Rooster forgets how much he is getting paid to do this and has to ask: “‘I forget just what our agreement was.’ ‘I offered to pay you fifty dollars for the job.’ ‘Yes, I remember that now. What did I say to that?’ ‘You said your price was a hundred dollars.’ ‘That is right, I remember now’” (85). Money cannot be forgotten, however Rooster did exactly that. He was a fool and could not remember the amount of money, a quite

Trying to get Mattie all the way out of the pit, Rooster attempted to put her on his back and climb out, but he could not. “He tried to climb the rope hand over hand with his feet against the sides of the pit but he made only about three pulls and had to drop back down. Our combined weight was too much for him” (213). Had Rooster been a perfect hero, like Superman, he would have been able to pull Mattie all the way out of the ditch. Unfortunately, it would have made the story unrealistic because no human can pull themselves, plus another person on their back out of a pit. Having a character like Superman that could fly around saving people like Mattie and killing villains like Lucky Ned Pepper would have made the story completely unrealistic and people would not think this could possibly be a true