True Grit

Reading True Grit is my first time experiencing a novel that falls under the Western genre. My family immigrated from South Korea and I grew up in a pretty un-American household, so I didn’t read or watch stories about cowboys and the wild west. Along with that, I live in the Texas suburbs which is about as un-Western as it gets, but I’ve heard and made many jokes about the state being a desert where people ride horses to work and garden tumbleweed, so I’ve never been able to take those things seriously. I’m pretty sorry to say, but that wasn’t much different with this novel.

I guess the biggest issue I had with True Grit was the amount of violence in it. I realize that guns were how people dealt with their problems back in their day, but I continually kept asking, “Did he HAVE to shoot and kill that character?” Their trigger-happiness was almost funny. Honestly, the way the characters behave in that aspect isn’t too much different from people in this modern day.


Also, I can see how the main character is empowering for women. She’s young but mature, strong, and doesn’t back down when confronted by the men. But the thing is, she’s the only important female character in the entire book. I think that for me, the book would have been more empowering if there were more women rather than a single girl who is basically a guy in every form except the physical.

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