Summer Reading Grade 10

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Summer Reading Grade 10 True Grit by Charles Portis ISBN13: 9781590204597 Tr ue Grit tells the story of Mattie Ross, who is just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shoots her father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robs him of his life, his horse, and $150 in cash money. Mattie leaves home to avenge her father's blood. With the oneeyed Rooster Cogburn, the meanest available U.S. Marshal, by her side, Mattie pursues her father’s murderer into Indian Territory. Your job is to read the novel carefully, enjoying the story but also paying attention to how Portis develops both the characters and the themes. You should a nnotate your text as you read, thinking about the following questions as you do so: 1. The story is told from the point of view of Mattie Ross as an adult in the early part of the 20th century, but the action takes place when she is a teenager in the 1870’s. What image of herself does she present to the reader? In what ways does the perspective of the grown Mattie influence the way that she tells the story? 2. Note Mattie’s tendency to divide people into categories according to race, religion, and politics. What does this habit reveal about her as a character? What does it reveal about the time and culture in which she lives? 3. To what degree do Mattie, Cogburn, and LaBeouf behave heroically? In what ways is their behavior not heroic? How would you define “grit,” and what, if anything, does it have to do with being a hero? 4. The novel takes place in a time when women had far fewer rights than they have today, but it was written in 1968, a year that was marked by feminist protest. How does the character of Mattie both reflect the cultural attitudes toward women during the time in which the story takes place and anticipate the feminist attitudes of the time in which it was written? 5. Mattie has an absolute sense of right and wrong that is deeply influenced by her religious upbringing. Is Mattie's "eye for an eye" approach to her revenge on Chaney justified? Are her methods sound? .

Copy Link

Recommended publications

Dangerously Free: Outlaws and Nation-Making in Literature of the Indian Territory
DANGEROUSLY FREE: OUTLAWS AND NATION-MAKING IN LITERATURE OF THE INDIAN TERRITORY by Jenna Hunnef A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of English University of Toronto © Copyright by Jenna Hunnef 2016 Dangerously Free: Outlaws and Nation-Making in Literature of the Indian Territory Jenna Hunnef Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto 2016 Abstract In this dissertation, I examine how literary representations of outlaws and outlawry have contributed to the shaping of national identity in the United States. I analyze a series of texts set in the former Indian Territory (now part of the state of Oklahoma) for traces of what I call “outlaw rhetorics,” that is, the political expression in literature of marginalized realities and competing visions of nationhood. Outlaw rhetorics elicit new ways to think the nation differently—to imagine the nation otherwise; as such, I demonstrate that outlaw narratives are as capable of challenging the nation’s claims to territorial or imaginative title as they are of asserting them. Borrowing from Abenaki scholar Lisa Brooks’s definition of “nation” as “the multifaceted, lived experience of families who gather in particular places,” this dissertation draws an analogous relationship between outlaws and domestic spaces wherein they are both considered simultaneously exempt from and constitutive of civic life. In the same way that the outlaw’s alternately celebrated and marginal status endows him or her with the power to support and eschew the stories a nation tells about itself, so the liminality and centrality of domestic life have proven effective as a means of consolidating and dissenting from the status quo of the nation-state.
[Show full text]
True "Grit" and "True Grit"
True "Grit" and "True Grit" JOHN DITSKY HE relatively recent success of the film version of Charles Portis's True Grit — with John Wayne play- ing its hero, Rooster Cogburn — has restored to familiar usage the term "grit." Wayne's performance, in which self-parody is indistinguishable from the serious portrayal of frontier manliness, challenges certain premises Americans hold about themselves. For the search for the meaning and the presence of true "grit" in the world of the American West ultimately leads to a re-examination of the roles which men and women were in effect asked to play by the conflicting norms of their society and their environment — were asked to play, that is, and also are asked to play, though the conditions of contemporary life differ markedly (at least in theory) from those of the legendary Wild West. In The Return of the Vanishing American (1968), Leslie Fiedler discusses the several myths born of frontier ex• perience which inform a substantial body of current Am• erican literature. Not a few of these story-patterns repre• sent reactions to the frontier environment that are them• selves part of a fictional American "character," particularly when the effects of frontier life on the American woman are considered. Fiedler identifies a Hannah Duston "Basic Myth" — that of the self-sufficient frontierswoman who survives by assuming the male role, often surpassing male skills in the part: But women insist that their essential fable be not ob• scured by . irrelevant male concerns, that the story remain true to their central vision of their lot and be projected in terms of their own sort of heroine: a strong TRUE "GRIT" AND "TRUE GRIT" 19 but immensely ordinary woman — preferably a mother — who is confronted by a male antagonist and, finding no male champion, must deliver herself.
[Show full text]
Undergraduate Course Description Packet Spring 2020 Updated: 10/29/19
Undergraduate Course Description Packet Spring 2020 Updated: 10/29/19 ENGL 1213-001, Introduction to Literature: The World’s Greatest Prose Styles, Including Your Own Instructor: K. Yandell Textbooks Required: TBD. Description: In this class we will study fiction and non-fiction prose styles widely recognized as the greatest in the English language, and to use both these examples and the classic rules of William Strunk and E. B. White to polish our own expository prose styles. Essays, exams, and other major requirements for undergraduates: TBD ENGL 1213-002, Introduction to Literature Instructor: S. Dempsey Textbooks Required: Sandel, Michel, Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? ISBN: 978-0374532505 Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein (Penguin Classics). ISBN: 978-0143131847. Plato, The Last Days of Socrates (Penguin Classics). ISBN: 978-0140449280. Additional readings will be distributed via Blackboard. Description: How do we know the good? How do we practice justice? How do we resist injustice? Who is included in our We? These questions will be central to this course’s inquiry into the parameters and challenges of living a just life. In order to encourage students to find their own answers to these questions, we will consider and debate how and why literature and other forms of media can facilitate our efforts at becoming more responsive to, and responsible for, the need for justice in our own time. Drawing upon both classic and contemporary literature, films, and non-fiction, as well as readings in philosophy, religion, political theory, and history, this course will consider not only what it means to be just ourselves, but also how to work with others in an effort to bend the arc of history towards justice.
[Show full text]
And Exploring Identity in Three Coen Brother Films Lauren Carey Lesley University
Lesley University DigitalCommons@Lesley Senior Theses College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) 2014 "Breaking Boundaries" and Exploring Identity in Three Coen Brother Films Lauren Carey Lesley University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/clas_theses Part of the Film and Media Studies Commons Recommended Citation Carey, Lauren, ""Breaking Boundaries" and Exploring Identity in Three Coen Brother Films" (2014). Senior Theses. 2. https://digitalcommons.lesley.edu/clas_theses/2 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS) at DigitalCommons@Lesley. It has been accepted for inclusion in Senior Theses by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Lesley. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Carey 1 Lauren Carey First Reader: Professor Liv Cummins Second Reader: Professor Ronald Lamothe Senior Thesis in Literary Criticism 1 December 2014 “Breaking Boundaries” and Exploring Identity in Three Coen Brother Films Audiences were first introduced to sibling filmmaking duo Joel and Ethan Coen in 1984 with their debut film Blood Simple. Since then the brothers have experienced considerable commercial and critical success with their 16 films, garnering six Academy Awards wins and more than 30 nominations. Attempts at naming a definitive style or genre or subject matter is a difficult undertaking when it comes to the Coen canon, and yet it seems to be this consistent unpredictability that continues to attract critics and audiences alike. Whatever the styles or genres they are working within or the subject matter of their story, though, the brothers’ interest in telling stories in America, about Americans is always clear.
[Show full text]
Remembering Charles Portis, with David Kern
(ACOUSTIC GUITAR THEME MUSIC) JONATHAN ROGERS, HOST: Welcome to The Habit Podcast: Conversations with Writers about Writing. I’m Jonathan Rogers, your host. (THEME MUSIC CONTINUES) JR: At the end of every episode of this podcast, I ask my guests, “Which writers make you want to write?” Charles Portis is a name that has come up several times. His novels, especially True Grit and The Dog of the South, certainly make me want to write. Roy Blount once said, “Charles Portis could be Cormac McCarthy if he wanted to, but he’d rather be funny.” I don’t suppose there could be a better summation of what I love about Charles Portis. Mr. Portis died on February 17, 2020, two weeks before the release date of this episode. My friend David Kern loves Charles Portis as much as I do, so I called him to reminisce. David Kern runs the Circe Institute’s podcast network, and hosts the Close Reads podcast, the Daily Poem podcast, and Libromania, a podcast for the book-obsessed. I commend those podcasts to you. A slightly edited version of this conversation is being posted as an episode over at Libromania. (THEME MUSIC FADES OUT) JR: David Kern, I’m so glad we’re having some time to talk about Charles Portis. DAVID KERN: Yeah, likewise. I can’t imagine that there are many writers who would be more fun to just, you know… just talk about and celebrate and spend some time with. JR: Yeah, I know. I have to admit, I didn’t realize Charles Portis was still alive until a couple months before he died.
[Show full text]
Springfield-Greene County Library Board of Trustees March 15, 2016 Minutes
Springfield-Greene County Library Board of Trustees March 15, 2016 Minutes The Board of Trustees of the Springfield-Greene County Library District met in regular session on Tuesday, March 15, 2016, at 4:00 p.m. at the Republic Branch Library, 921 N. Lindsey Avenue, Republic, Missouri. Members of the Board of Trustees were present or absent as follows: Present/Absent Michelle Moulder, President and Member: Absent Andrea McKinney, Vice President and Member: Present Steven Ehase, Secretary and Member: Present Michele Risdal-Barnes, Treasurer and Member: Present Derek Fraley, Member Present Bill Garvin, Member Present James Jeffries, Member: Present Ashley Norgard, Member Present Matthew Simpson, Member: Absent – arrived later In the absence of the President, The Vice President of the Board of Trustees declared that a quorum was present and called the meeting to order. Disposition of Minutes: Ehase moved to approve the minutes of the regular session of February 16, 2016; Risdal-Barnes seconded. Ehase yea, Fraley yea, Garvin yea, Jeffries yea, McKinney yea, Norgard yea, Risdal-Barnes yea. Motion carried. Standing Committees: Finance and Personnel Committee: the report was deferred until later in the meeting. Buildings and Grounds Committee: the report was deferred until later in the meeting. Report of the Director: • Mayor Bob Stephens sent a letter to Cooper to share with the board and staff, thanking the Library for hosting the FEMA Disaster Recovery Team at the Library Center. • Library Center Reference Associate Anna Mattonen was awarded a $1,000 fellowship to attend the International Federation of Library Association and Institutions World Library and Information Congress in Columbus, Ohio in August.
[Show full text]
Rising 9Th and 10Th Grade: 2015 Community Summer Reading List
Rising 9th and 10th grade: 2015 Community Summer Reading List In addition to any reading assigned for specific classes, pick at least one book from this Community Summer Reading list. This book must, on your honor, be one that you have not read before. You can read any digital or print edition of your book. The online version of this list (found on SPSG’s Learning Management System) links to book reviews. You will use the LMS over the summer to complete a short assignment related to your summer reading. Under the Summer Activities tab, go to the Upper School Community Summer Reading group and to the correct grade level. From there, students can browse the assignments by clicking on the Resources button in the top banner. Pick one assignment to complete. To post the completed assignment, please click on the Discussions button and go to the correct activity’s discussion board topic. Students should post their initial assignment by July 21st, and then reply to at least one other student’s assignment post by August 21st. Please contact SPSG's Director of Instructional Technology, Emily Ziegler, [email protected] if you have problems logging or questions about the activity. 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson A Dog’s Purpose: A Novel for Humans by W. Bruce Cameron À la Carte by Tanita S. Davis All These Things I’ve Done (or any in the Birthright series) by Gabrielle Zevin Ash by Malinda Lo The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King. Being Emily by Rachel Gold Bellweather Rhapsody by Kate Racculia The Book Thief by Markus Zusak Boxers/Saints
[Show full text]
Fotp16 Film Series Flyer
2016 Film Series Watch and discuss the two film adaptations of True Grit by Charles Portis Thursday, September 29 · 6:30 p.m. True Grit (1969) Each screening is Released hot on the heels of the best‐selling hosted by a guest novel, this screen adaptation makes good use scholar. Begin with a of Hollywood Western superstar John Wayne brief introduction of the film and the in the role of Rooster Cogburn, the grumpy, written work on which pot‐bellied U.S. marshal hired by 14‐year‐old it is based, and stay Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) to find Tom Chaney after the closing (Jeff Corey), who killed her father. Country credits for an open music singer Glen Campbell appears in the Q&A discussion. role of Texas Ranger LaBoeuf, also pursuing Special thanks to our Chaney for reasons of his own. Look for Rob‐ guest scholars for sharing their time and ert Duvall and Dennis Hopper as members of expertise with the the notorious Ned Pepper Gang, with whom community: Chaney may or may not be in cahoots. Lee Brewer Jones, Georgia Perimeter 128 minutes / Rated G / © Paramount Pictures College Stephen Bain, Thursday, October 13 · 6:30 p.m. high school English teacher True Grit (2010) Big‐screen newcomer Hailee Steinfeld takes This year, people all over Fayette County are reading her place front and center as Mattie Ross, the True Grit independent‐minded 14‐year‐old who re‐ by Charles Portis cruits Marshal Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn for the 9th annual (Jeff Bridges) to help her track down the mur‐ Fayette on the Page One Book, One Community.
[Show full text]
Lewis & Clark Library Newsletter October 2015
Lewis & Clark Library Newsletter October 2015 Lewis & Clark Library Main Branch 406-447-1690 120 S Last Chance Gulch Helena MT 59601 Mon.-Thurs. 10 AM-9 PM Fri. 10 AM-6 PM Sat. 10 AM-5 PM Sun. 1 PM-5PM Augusta Branch Library 406-562-3348 205 Main St / PO Box 387 Augusta, MT 59410 Sun. 3 PM-7 PM Mon. 1 PM-5 PM Tues. & Wed. 10 AM-5 PM Thurs 10 AM-3 PM Closed Fri & Sat Miller’s East Helena Branch Library 406-227-5750 Crossing 16 E Main St / PO Box 1398 East Helena MT 59635 Tues. 1-7 PM Wed. 10 AM-5 PM Thurs. 1-7 PM Fri. 10 AM-5 PM Sat. 10 AM-3 PM Closed Sun. & Mon. Lincoln Branch Library Helena Nights 406-362-4300 102 9th St / PO Box 309 Lincoln MT 59639 Sun. 1 PM-4 PM Mon. 4-8 PM Tues. & Wed. 1-6 PM 10:30 AM- Thurs. 2:30 PM Fri. 3-6 PM Closed Sat. Helena Tourism Alliance Presented by Vic Reiman from the ectures Montana Historical Society. oing on All Keynote Speaker Jay Mike Logan’s Cowboy Month: Jennings: True Grit and Poetry the Further Adventures Lewis & Clark Library’s Large *Story Time at the Helena of Charles Portis Meeting Room. Thursday, October Branch, Wednesdays & Thursdays, 22 @ 7 PM 10:30-11 AM. Story Steps Lewis & Clark Library, Large Meeting Room. Thursday, Enjoy an evening of delightful *Saturday Story Time & October 1 @ 7 PM rustic poetry recited and read by the author.
[Show full text]
TRUE GRIT by CHARLES PORTIS
TRUE GRIT by CHARLES PORTIS For my mother and father. Table of Contents Title Page Table of Contents ONE TWO THREE FOUR FIVE SIX SEVEN ONE 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. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band. Here is what happened. We had clear title to 480 acres of good bottom land on the south bank of the Arkansas River not far from Dardanelle in Yell County, Arkansas. Tom Chaney was a tenant but working for hire and not on shares. He turned up one day hungry and riding a gray horse that had a filthy blanket on his back and a rope halter instead of a bridle. Papa took pity on the fellow and gave him a job and a place to live. It was a cotton house made over into a little cabin. It had a good roof. Tom Chaney said he was from Louisiana. He was a short man with cruel features, I will tell more about his face later. He carried a Henry rifle. He was a bachelor about twenty-five years of age.
[Show full text]
Portis TG2014.Pdf
Examining an author’s life can inform and expand the reader’s understanding of a novel. Biographical criticism is the practice of analyzing a literary work through the lens of an author’s experience. In this lesson, explore the author’s life to understand the novel more fully. 1 True Grit is not in any sense an autobiographical work. Its events take Lesson One place more than half a century before the author’s birth, and none of its characters or situations are drawn from his own experience. Yet, like Mattie FOCUS: Ross, the novel’s narrator and protagonist, Charles Portis is from Arkansas, where he has spent his entire life, except for his military service during Biography the Korean War and several years working as a journalist in New York City. Much of his writing, both fiction and journalism, is informed by his identification with his native South, as is shown in Mattie’s political views and the reminiscences of the Civil War by Rooster Cogburn and LaBoeuf. ?? Discussion Activities Listen to The Big Read Audio Guide. Have students take notes as they listen. Ask them to present the three most important points learned from the Audio Guide. Divide the class into three groups. Assign and distribute one of the following to each group: “Introduction to the Novel,” “Charles Portis,” and “The Western Film and True Grit ” from the Reader’s Guide. Each group will present a summary of the main points in its assigned reading. ?? Writing Exercise Have the students write a short essay about a favorite novel with a historical setting.
[Show full text]
There Is a Moment at the Very End of Charles Portis's Novel True
History, Fiction, and Ethics: The Search for the True West in True Grit Kenneth Millard here is a moment at the very end of Charles Portis’s novel True Grit when the narrator, thirty-nine-year-old Mattie Ross, looks Tback on the events of twenty-five years earlier and offers the words “Time just gets away from us” as a succinct moral to conclude her account of the passing of the Western frontier and of that historical period in her life that constituted her coming of age.1 Mattie Ross has been deeply shaped by that moment in history, and marked forever by the loss of her right arm. Simultaneously, the passing of the frontier, the advent of statehood for Oklahoma, and modernity for the emergent nation, mark a crucial his- torical stage in the nation’s coming of age. Thus True Grit offers the young teenage protagonist’s story at a significant moment in American history and thereby conflates the coming of age of both the fictional individual and the historical United States. The study of fiction of the American West has long since been character- ized, even beleaguered, by a tension between history and fiction. Because the myths of the American frontier are so well established and widely promulgated, historians and literary critics have devoted much energy to understanding how the West really was, as a scholarly counternarrative to the baneful stereotypes of film and television. This project has led to antagonism between history and literature as to which discipline has the higher grounds of knowledge. What kind of critic has the better claim to understanding the true nature of the West? This question was given par- ticular urgency in the 1990s by the advent of the movement known as New Western History, founded on such studies as Patricia Limerick’s Legacy of Conquest, Richard White’s “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own,” Cronon, Miles, and Gitlin’s Under an Open Sky, and Donald Worster’s Riv- ers of Empire.2 These works of history made bold statements (that claimed to be new) about the political nature of Western studies.
[Show full text]