Father Wounds in True Grit
Written by Kathryn Heim
Why does Mattie pick Rootser? As I read True Grit, I was struck by the deep Father Wound of Mattie Ross. This realization caused me to reflect on this question. Mattie is given the names of several different marshals, and Rooster is not even listed as the best. He is described as “the meanest one” and “a pitiless man, double-tough, and fear don’t enter in his thinking.” Mattie chooses him without hesitation or deliberation. She is not interested in William Waters, who “is the best tracker.” Nor does she consider L.T. Quinn, who “brings his prisoners in alive” and “is straight as a string.”
Mattie says of her own father, whose death she is determined to avenge, “If Papa had a failing, it was his kindly disposition. People would use him… Frank Ross was the gentlest, most honorable man who ever lived.” Perhaps she sees her father’s kindness as a weakness, the weakness that led to his death, and left her, a fourteen-year-old girl, to hold her family together. After all, that kindly disposition caused him to take in Tom Chaney in the first place. And so, when it comes to choosing a man to go after her father’s killer, she chooses the opposite example, and Rooster Cogburn doesn’t fail her. Rooster accomplishes their goal, and he saves her life, but then he, too, abandons her and disappears, despite all her efforts to reach out to him again.
Mattie’s father and Rooster are opposite extremes, yet she loses them both. She risks her own life to track down her father’s killer, and then, later, she spends years trying to bring Rooster back into her world. She never marries or allows another man to enter the life she has created for herself.
Mattie’s recounting of her experience is told as the narrative of Mattie as an old maid years after the events. Is she trying to justify and vindicate everything that happened? After all, it was her desire for justice and her actions that caused all these things to take place, resulting in so many deaths, including her beloved pony, Blackie, and finally her own loss of an arm.
So, what was Mattie seeking? Was it justice? Revenge? As I thought about the story more, I was convinced it was something more fundamental: she was seeking a lost father. More vitally, she was seeking the Father.
Mattie’s confidence and grit are certainly admirable, but the need for them is also to be mourned.
I spend a lot of time with my oldest niece, who just turned thirteen and is incredibly mature and self-possessed for her age. However, I have to constantly remind myself that she is still only a child, even if a very reliable one. Though she might be perfectly capable of watching her three younger siblings when needed, it would be unfair to ask her to sacrifice too much of her brief period as a kid just because we, as grown-ups, want a break from time to time. Her time to sacrifice, to rely on her own grit, will come soon enough.
Mattie’s childhood was possibly cut short even before the death of her father due to the challenging circumstances of the time and place that her family was living in. She was already keeping the books and was clearly mature enough that she was trusted to travel and negotiate the arrangements for the return of her father’s body. Upon his death, she quickly steps into the new role as head of the household, treating even Lawyer Daggett as someone under her command. Mattie Ross is barely matured into a woman yet already functions on the same level as every man she encounters. Who is she to turn to for comfort, wisdom, or protection? How is she to think of herself as a daughter of God when she has put her own childhood and femininity so far from her mind?
The need for the Father is written into all of us from our first creation. So, we will naturally seek Him all our lives on whatever occasion the world presents to us. Our earthly fathers are the first and most obvious examples, but when those figures fail us, we will go on seeking others. Just as we chase the pleasures of this world in our desire for the pleasures achievable only in Heaven, we will seek the love and security of God the Father in the people of this world as well.
One of the hardest things in this world is when we don’t clearly understand what we are seeking; we end up looking in the wrong places for the wrong things and perhaps miss the right things when they come along. Were there decent men in her life that Mattie passed by as she sought to reconnect with Rooster? Did her understanding of God’s Fatherhood get warped by the experiences she focused on in her life rather than allowing His Truth to shed light on those experiences and bring her peace?
For me, Mattie’s story was ultimately a tragedy about a girl robbed of childhood, ruled by pride and self-reliance, and blinded to the search for her Heavenly Father. However, like all tragedies, it can be read as a cautionary tale. What are we seeking in our own lives? Perceived goods or the Ultimate Good? What wounds do we bear that may drive us recklessly forward, leaving casualties along the way?
I remind myself that Mattie Ross is a fictional character. Yet, she is like so many lost children of today’s culture. As genuine masculinity and fatherhood are under attack, women also suffer as we are deprived of support and true partnership. We are forced to survive by our grit instead of being able to rest in the confidence of Our Lord’s love and providence. We isolate ourselves because we have lost trust in those around us. We have lost the true vision of what it means to be children of God.
May the good and merciful God heal us of our wounds and restore us to rightly ordered relationships, and may we encounter a genuine, heavenly grit in ourselves along the way.
About Kathryn Heim
Kathryn Evans Heim is an author and wife living outside Salisbury, NC, where she gardens, raises chickens, experiments with cooking, and reads too many books. Find her work at www.evanswriting.com.
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