True Grit Analysis

In the Last Stand, written by Nathaniel Philbrick he discusses a big leader in the Civil War, George Armstrong Custer and how he led his troops with reckless courage. Philbrick wrote this book which can be viewed in many ways: a bloody massacre that is a big part of American history, or a tale of crazy arrogance and even unmatched bravery. One way that this book can be viewed as is the Last Stand being viewed as an account of a well-known battle that encapsulates the treatment of Native Americans during the “Indian Wars.” The next option is that the Last Stand is a retelling story of a history that does not glorify the United States Army in the Indian Wars, but shows the hubris and reckless of the leaders and army. Finally, the Last Stand can be viewed as a double meaning, both the last stand for Custer and the Last Stand for the Sitting Bull and the Lakota Sioux. In this essay, I’m going to discuss the ways in which Custer leads his troops and how he was a powerful leader during this time.

“Indians are like the weather.” With his opening words Vine Deloria Jr. sets up the basis for the rest of his witty yet substantial manifesto, Custer Died for Your Sins. The book, which describes the struggles and misrepresentation of the American Indian people in 1960s American culture, is written in a style that changes from ironic and humorous satire to serious notions, then back again. Through energetic dialogue that engages the reader in a clever and articulate presentation, Deloria advocates the dismissal of old stereotypes and shows a viewpoint that allows the general public to gain a deeper understanding of what it is to be an American Indian.

Grit, what is this? Is it success, is it failure, or is it talent? As Angela Duckworth said “Grit is passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day-in and day-out. Not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years. And working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it’s a marathon, not a sprint.” Grit is a combination of strength, persistence, focus, and dedication that helps a person to maintain the optimism and discipline needed to persevere in their goals even if they are head to head with failure. Grit does not depend on talent, IQ, or success. Grit is the ability to fail and learn from your mistake, in order to come back next

When it comes to bullying in schools it has plenty of negative effects on some individual students. There are some kids who don’t have a problem with bullying because they are the problem.

Will Mattie get to tag along with Rooster on the hunt for Tom Chaney? Rooster is very uneasy about letting Mattie, a child, accompany him for this manhunt. Although, Mattie is willing to pay Rooster one hundred dollars, he is still unwilling to budge on letting her join. The next morning Mattie arrives at the Chinese restaurant, where Rooster is staying, only to find out he has already set out on the long journey without her. Once Mattie realizes she has been left she jumps on her horse, Blackie, to chase after Rooster and LaBoeuf. When Mattie gets to the river and finds that the men have already crossed she meets a gentleman and asked him to take her across. This gentleman has specific orders to take Mattie back to the train station and send her on her way home. Mattie then knocks him in the head and makes her horse swim across the river to meet the men. When Mattie gets to the other side LaBoeuf jumps off his horse to beat her, at this moment

Native American literature from the Southeastern United States is deeply rooted in the oral traditions of the various tribes that have historically called that region home. While the tribes most integrally associated with the Southeastern U.S. in the American popular mind--the FIVE CIVILIZED TRIBES (Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole)--were forcibly relocated to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) from their ancestral territories in the American South, descendents of those tribes have created compelling literary works that have kept alive their tribal identities and histories by incorporating traditional themes and narrative elements. While reflecting profound awareness of

Mattie confirms, it is her fathers body, she declares, “That is my father. Tom Chaney would pay for this! (24).” This is her quest to reclaim the injustice in her life. The threshold is next, this the jumping off point in Mattie’s journey. “the initiate may encounter people, or situations which block her passage into the journey. The two men who were hired to get the culprit didn’t want her presence, they left on the journey alone, then try to turn her into the sherriff, for being a runaway and told the man who tried to stop her “I have business across the river (106)”. Above all, Mattie still insisted she go. Mattie stated, “We hit the river running…we were up and free I reined in (107) .” These situations, display that she was being blocked on her passage into the journey. This is brings her to Choctaw Nation, the initiate begins the journey into the unknown.

The next major event is Mattie hiring US Marshall Rooster Cogburn to hunt down Chaney and bring him back to Ft Smith to hang for the murder of her father. As it turns out, just after she hired Rooster, a Texas Ranger shows up in Ft Smith, by the name of LaBoeuf, who is also on the trail of Chaney for the murder of a State Senator in Texas. He meets up with Rooster, and when the latter learns of the much larger reward being offered from people in Texas, he agrees to let LaBoeuf team up with he and

Mattie does not beat around the bush when it comes to justice. She has a fixed view on how law should be carried out against Tom Chaney and stops at nothing to achieve this. Put simply, Mattie wants him dead, and she wants him to know that he is dying as a result of him killing her father. This view and interpretation of justice closely resembles the “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” philosophy of the Code of Hammurabi where the life of Tom Chaney must be payed for

The opening of the novel presents a prelude of how life for the 19th century cowboy was and how

Christine Bold’s article, “The Rough Riders at Home and Abroad: Cody, Roosevelt, Remington, and the Imperialist Hero,” tracks the contributions of three important historical figures: William Cody, Theodore Roosevelt, and Frederic Remington, to the image of the Rough Riders and the “packaged version of the American West” and its influence during the Spanish-American War (Bold, 324). After offering background on the conflict, she first considers the contributions of William Cody and his Wild West Show to the Rough Riders. She details how Cody constructed a narrative

Mattie is now in the initiation step of the journey, where she will go through four parts; the first part is the challenges and the second is the abyss. Anywhere that Mattie went she faced challenges as how the hero’s journey’s writes, “Whichever direction the voyage takes… [she] puts [herself] more and more at risk, emotionally and physically…. always seem to strike the initiate’s greatest weakness: [her] poorest skills… [Her] most vulnerable emotions” (Harris and Thompson 51). A challenge that we see Mattie puts herself at risk and show her weakness is when see faces Tom Chaney and says,

Tindall, George Brown, David E. Shi, and Charles W. Eagles. America a Narrative History. 10th ed. Vol. 1. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004.

Kolodny explains that the captivity narrative and Indian War narrative have “long been appreciated by Americanists as an ongoing literary vehicle through which successive generations of Americans played out the symbolic dramas of westward migration” (330). Americans saw their fears of the wilderness conquered in captivity narratives and could then move into the West with their new knowledge. The captivity narrative can serve as a tale of westward expansion because, as Kolodny continues to explain, the captivity narrative represents “the mythopoetic prototype of the white man’s fantasied intimacy with the red...[where] Americans came to displace the Indian with the figure of the Indianized white man as the proper hero of the American wilderness” (330). The Indianized white man holds special knowledge of the wilderness and can straddle both civilization and the wilderness. Though captivity narratives may be somewhat different in their content from the classic Western tale popular while Crane wrote, they share an important figure: the rough frontier hero who understands and controls the land. Jack Potter in depicts the same kind of desire for westward migration as he comes to represent both Eastern and Western culture.

There Will be Blood (2007) is an entertaining movie that delineates in various forms that will be discussed from other western genres. It is a story that is formed from a novel by Upton Sinclair’s book, Oil! (1927) (Belton, 2009, p.401). Many westerns were based on dime novels that were written in the mid and late 1800s (Belton, 2009, p.246). American society was going through a transitional period from an agrarian society to an industrial society in the 1800s and early 1900s (Wright 2001; Desk Encyclopedia, 1989, pp. 27-28, 630-631). The change in revolutions could explain the difference in most western genres and the movie There Will be Blood. In fact, one important different aspect is the contrasts between There Will be Blood and other