My Attitude to Mattie in True Grit

I do not think Mattie is a reliable narrator. Almost everybody stretches the truth to make an average adventure seem extremely dangerous. I think Mattie plays around with the facts for entertainment purposes. No one wants to listen to a story about washing dishes or cleaning a bathroom. People want interesting stories so Mattie gave us one, and that is the only way a lot of people would read this book.

Mattie adds a lot of descriptions to make sure the reader can imagine themselves in the scene that she is talking about. If the reader can imagine the scene that they are thinking about, then the reader thinks it to be true. Mattie exaggerated the cave that she fell in a lot. While in the cave, Mattie says that it was cold and dark in there, but it was not totally dark (“True Grit”). She also goes on to say she shockingly noticed her forearm was bent in an unnatural way (“True Grit”). Everytime I go from a bright place, like outside during the day, and enter a dark place, like a basement or a cave, I cannot see anything for a while. It takes about half a minute for my eyes to adjust. If it was truly dark, but not totally dark, she would not have been able to see her arm bent in an unusual way for a while longer. She tries to tell the this part of the story with as little detail, and as fast as possible, so the reader believes it went extremely fast, and very intense.

When Mattie fell in the pit, she was stuck in a hole smaller than her. As she begins to fall through the hole in the pit, she decides a wedge to prevent her from slipping any further. She sees a blue shirt so she reaches for it, then grabs a stick to pull it into reach, soon finding it is attached to a dead person. Mattie claims there were no fewer than forty snakes inside the dead person’s chest (“True Grit”). Snakes do not usually live in herds or packs. She had to have stretched the truth about the amount of snakes, because there is not enough room inside an average human’s chest for forty or more average sized snakes.

I think everyone stretches the truth at one point or another. If everything everybody said was truthful, there would not be as much interesting things out there. It creates fun in stories, like True Grit, so readers have have a hard time separating truth from fiction. Mattie stretches the truth just like Rooster when she accused him of “stretching the blanket”.