AP Literature: November 2011

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

References

"Luke 14:23 "Then the Master Told His Servant, 'Go out to the Roads and Country Lanes and Make Them Come In, so That My House Will Be Full." Online Parallel Bible: Weaving God's Word into the Web. Web. 30 Nov. 2011. <http://bible.cc/luke/14-23.htm>.

Save, Phone &. "Bushwhacker | Define Bushwhacker at Dictionary.com." Dictionary.com | Find the Meanings and Definitions of Words at Dictionary.com. Web. 30 Nov. 2011. <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bushwhacker>.

"The Sin of Sloth." 7 Deadly Sins, 7 Heavenly Virtues. Web. 30 Nov. 2011. <http://www.deadlysins.com/sins/sloth.html>.

"The Wizard of Oz (1939) - Plot Summary." The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Web. 30 Nov. 2011. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032138/plotsummary>.

"Quote by William Shakespeare: "I Would Not Put a Thief in My Mouth to Steal My B..."" Share Book Recommendations With Your Friends, Join Book Clubs, Answer Trivia. Web. 30 Nov. 2011. <http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/347808>.

"2 Timothy 1:9." BibleGateway.com. Web. <http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Timothy+1%3A9&version=KJV>.

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11. “Rooster cut the rope with his dirk knife and the mule breathes easy again. The grateful beast wandered off shaking his head about.... “Call that a sport, do you?” said he. They were two mighty surprised boys.” 114

The first glance at Rooster’s present and past shows that he is a bad man. He has shot over twenty men in four years and he really enjoys his whiskey and gun. But Mattie isn’t so quick to judge, and finds him to be a truly good person in the end. Portis slowly makes the reader realize this with Rooster’s small acts of kindness. This quote is just one small example of his compassion, although the more obvious example is when he rescues Mattie by running her back to town when she is bitten by a rattle snake. With this, Portis is making the point that almost everyone has human compassion in them, even those who seem a little rough on the outside.

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10. “You are her strong right arm now, Mattie, and you are a pearl of great price to me, but there are times when you are an almighty trial to those who love you.” 79

This quote is in a letter that Lawyer Daggot sends to Mattie while she is still in Fort Smith. When Portis writes “you are her strong right arm now,” he might be foreshadowing Mattie’s loss of her arm later in the book. Perhaps this quote is also foreshadowing the other sacrifices Mattie will make in order to complete her mission of justice, including her own family. She misses her father’s funeral, refuses to be at home during a family’s most vulnerable time, and leaves town without wondering how much her mother must be worrying.

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9. “Yet I was not to taste the victory. The kick of the big pistol sent me reeling backward. I had forgotten about the pit behind me! Over the edge I went, then tumbling and bouncing against the irregular sides, and all the while I was grabbing wildly for something and finding nothing.” 204

Being thrown into a snake pit is the punishment for one of the seven deadly sins, slothfulness. Mattie is the opposite of slothful, she has nothing but zeal, yet she is thrown into a pit of snakes as if she has been slothful. Portis uses a snake pit to emphasize the theme in the book about how things do not always happening fairly. There is no fate for certain actions and life is out of everyone’s control but God’s. So although Mattie is an opposite of this sin, she receives the punishment anyways because that is just how things happen sometimes.

"The Sin of Sloth." 7 Deadly Sins, 7 Heavenly Virtues. Web. 30 Nov. 2011. <http://www.deadlysins.com/sins/sloth.html>.

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8. “They say he has grit,” said I. “I wanted a man with grit”.....

“It may prove to be a hard journey.”

“The good Christian does not flinch from difficulties.” 92

Throughout the beginning of the book, Mattie’s mission is to find a man with “true grit,” someone who will get a job done right, regardless of the circumstances. But in the end the reader realizes, although the men have grit as well, it is really Mattie herself with the true grit. In this quote Portis foreshadows this discovery when Mattie speaks of not flinching from difficulties. She truly never does flinch, and always keeps her word.

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7. “In late may of 1903 Little Frank sent me a cutting from The Commercial Appeal in Memphis. It was an advertisement for the Cole Younger and Frank James “Wild West” show that was coming to play in the memphis Chicks’ baseball park.” 220

Most of the book is set post Civil war in the late 1800’s when the Confederacy was drastically changing. The book then ends at the beginning of the 1900’s, when culture has already changed drastically. Portis’s True Grit is as much historical fiction as it is adventure because it shows these culture changes that occurred in the West. There would never have been a “Wild West” show in the 1800’s when there was a real frontier, but people of the 1900’s were nostalgic for the old frontier of the West. This is why these shows began popping up everywhere. Clearly Rooster also has to change with society, because he starts off as a real trooper and turns into a fake one.

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6. “We heard there was a Kansas major coming in that night to look over everybody for bushwhackers.” 142

The term “bushwhacker” has many meanings, but the way it is used here has a lot of historical significance. During the Civil War the term “bushwhacker” was used for confederate guerrillas. Portis uses this old term to give the setting and character authenticity. The fact that Rooster doesn't know what "bushwhacker" means shows what kind of man he is. He is intelligent in many ways, but this is not one of them.

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5. “I confess it is hard doctrine, running contrary to our earthly ideas of fair play, but I can see no way around it. Rear I Corinthians 6: 13 and II Timothy 1: 9, 10.... There you have it. It was good for Paul and Silas and it is good enough for me. It is good enough for you too.” 115

In this quote, Mattie Ross is saying that things don’t always happen fairly. Portis is describing how Mattie doesn’t know why they happen how they do, but she has accepted everything fully because of this knowledge. And everyone else should go ahead and accept it too. Mattie also alludes to II Timothy 1:9 which states that we cannot determine what happens to us, because everything has to do with God. This is an overlying theme in True Grit. Every main character seems to have accepted the fact that terrible things happen for unknowable reasons, but they all want to do something about it. Although they cannot change things that happen, they want justice and revenge in the world.

"2 Timothy 1:9." BibleGateway.com. Web. <http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Timothy+1%3A9&version=KJV>.

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4. “I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains.”

Portis uses dialogue to develop Mattie’s strong character. Mattie is a very intelligent and proper girl with strong morals and because of this, she doesn’t wish to touch a drop of whiskey. But as Mattie does with the Bible, she seamlessly quotes Shakespeare’s Othelllo, using it in perfect context. There aren’t many fourteen-year-old girls who could quote Shakespeare like that.

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3. “She had been schooled by a missionary. What preachers we had in those days! Truly they took the word into ‘the highways and the hedges.’” 114

In this quote, Mattie seamlessly references the bible in her thoughts. With this, Portis makes the different contrasting parts of Mattie more clear. There is one part of her that will stop at nothing to get revenge for her father’s murder. This side of Mattie teams up with two men who appear to be fairly unsavory individuals. She ventures off with them, carrying a gun and her father’s hat, with thoughts of killing a man. But what this quote shows about Mattie is that she is quite learned in the ways of the bible. This reference slips out as easily as a Justin Beiber reference would from a girl today. These sides of her are somewhat conflicting, although they would be even more conflicting in today’s society where killing for any reason is a very serious crime.

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2. “People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day.” 11

The opening line in Charles Portis’s True Grit sets up the overall feeling of the book. It is blunt, smart, and rather proper. This is Mattie Ross, the main character and narrator who goes out to attain her version of justice, which is the blood of her father’s killer. It first seems strange that a proper christian girl in the late 1800’s would want to go into the wilderness and kill a man, but the setting and time period must be taken into account. A fourteen-year-old girl today would most likely never consider this, but Mattie lives in the poor south, post Civil war. Death was a common punishment and the meaning of justice was literally “an eye for an eye.”

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1. “We resumed our journey in thoughtful silence, the three of us now riding together and pushing deeper into the Territory to I knew not what.” 111

In this quote, Portis conveys an image of three travelers on a mission, similar to the group of four (and a half) travelers in The Wizard of Oz. They are unlikely companions in both stories, and the powerhouse of each group as well as the main character, is an intelligent older girl. These stories loosely parallel each other throughout the stories, especially in the beginnings. Both begin with a disaster of sorts. In The Wizard of Oz Dorothy begins her mission as a result of a disaster, specifically a tornado that sweeps her into a strange world. And so she pursues home. Mattie’s adventure in True Grit also begins with a disaster when her father is killed and her mission is to find the man who is at fault and have him killed.

"The Wizard of Oz (1939) - Plot Summary." The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Web. 30 Nov. 2011. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032138/plotsummary>.