True Grit
10/01/11 22:17 Filed in: Popular Culture
I took the opportunity to watch the Coen brothers’ version of True Grit yesterday. I think I remember seeing the John Wayne version way back when, but I don’t remember much about it. I did, however, read the book by Portis before seeing the latest movie.
Stanley Fish has also commented on the recent installment. He concludes that True Grit is a religious movie. Religion in this movie I “is everything, not despite but because of its refusal to resolve or soften the dilemmas the narrative delivers up.” That dilemma, according to Fish, is that Grace is given freely -- arbitrarily -- by God regardless of whether one is good or bad in life. Mattie our heroine, for instance, loses her arm and lives as a spinster after avenging her father’s death. Fish does not consider, as one commentator on his blog points out, that “Justice is mine saith the Lord,” which could mean that Mattie is bad, just as bad maybe, as Ned Pepper or Tom Chaney, who killed her father. And, I think it is quite clear throughout the novel and the movie that Rooster Cogburn is no saint.
Fish’s conclusion hinges on his interpretation of a particular sentence that the book and movie share. Fish writes
“The springs of that universe are revealed to us by the narrator-heroine Mattie in words that appear both in Charles Portis’s novel and the two films, but with a difference. The words the book and films share are these: “You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free with the exception of God’s grace.” These two sentences suggest a world in which everything comes around, if not sooner then later. The accounting is strict; nothing is free, except the grace of God. But free can bear two readings — distributed freely, just come and pick it up; or distributed in a way that exhibits no discernible pattern. In one reading grace is given to anyone and everyone; in the other it is given only to those whom God chooses for reasons that remain mysterious.”
Fish sees two ways of understanding how “grace” is free: either one can go up to the lunch line and get it or God gives it to whomever God wants regardless of whether the person deserves it or not. Because Mattie’s world is so hard, and things just happen to good people and bad people, Fish concludes that grace is given indiscriminately by God to whomever God chooses. In many ways, this interpretation is quite Augustinian. Augustine makes it quite clear that if God must give grace to those who deserve and cannot give grace to those who do not deserve it, then we violate the Divine Will. God’s Will cannot be bound by our logic. God gives grace to whom God deems to give it to, good or bad. In this sense, the Coen film and the Portis novel are, not only religious, but Augustinian and protestant.
Yet, I would suggest that a third way presents itself for understand freely. Perhaps we don’t go to the lunch line to pick up grace if we want, and God does not give it to just anyone. Perhaps God gives grace to everyone at judgment day. Portis’ novel clearly depicts the harshness of life and the insight that we know from the Book of Job that the good often suffer and the bad often are rewarded. Yet, grace need not be given in this life, which is what I think the novel truly depicts. Grace is free, but everything else you have to pay for.
Of course, we know that isn’t true either. But perhaps rethinking our conception of grace might help us accept that fact of the present world.
Stanley Fish has also commented on the recent installment. He concludes that True Grit is a religious movie. Religion in this movie I “is everything, not despite but because of its refusal to resolve or soften the dilemmas the narrative delivers up.” That dilemma, according to Fish, is that Grace is given freely -- arbitrarily -- by God regardless of whether one is good or bad in life. Mattie our heroine, for instance, loses her arm and lives as a spinster after avenging her father’s death. Fish does not consider, as one commentator on his blog points out, that “Justice is mine saith the Lord,” which could mean that Mattie is bad, just as bad maybe, as Ned Pepper or Tom Chaney, who killed her father. And, I think it is quite clear throughout the novel and the movie that Rooster Cogburn is no saint.
Fish’s conclusion hinges on his interpretation of a particular sentence that the book and movie share. Fish writes
“The springs of that universe are revealed to us by the narrator-heroine Mattie in words that appear both in Charles Portis’s novel and the two films, but with a difference. The words the book and films share are these: “You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free with the exception of God’s grace.” These two sentences suggest a world in which everything comes around, if not sooner then later. The accounting is strict; nothing is free, except the grace of God. But free can bear two readings — distributed freely, just come and pick it up; or distributed in a way that exhibits no discernible pattern. In one reading grace is given to anyone and everyone; in the other it is given only to those whom God chooses for reasons that remain mysterious.”
Fish sees two ways of understanding how “grace” is free: either one can go up to the lunch line and get it or God gives it to whomever God wants regardless of whether the person deserves it or not. Because Mattie’s world is so hard, and things just happen to good people and bad people, Fish concludes that grace is given indiscriminately by God to whomever God chooses. In many ways, this interpretation is quite Augustinian. Augustine makes it quite clear that if God must give grace to those who deserve and cannot give grace to those who do not deserve it, then we violate the Divine Will. God’s Will cannot be bound by our logic. God gives grace to whom God deems to give it to, good or bad. In this sense, the Coen film and the Portis novel are, not only religious, but Augustinian and protestant.
Yet, I would suggest that a third way presents itself for understand freely. Perhaps we don’t go to the lunch line to pick up grace if we want, and God does not give it to just anyone. Perhaps God gives grace to everyone at judgment day. Portis’ novel clearly depicts the harshness of life and the insight that we know from the Book of Job that the good often suffer and the bad often are rewarded. Yet, grace need not be given in this life, which is what I think the novel truly depicts. Grace is free, but everything else you have to pay for.
Of course, we know that isn’t true either. But perhaps rethinking our conception of grace might help us accept that fact of the present world.
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