Hong Chung

Ryan Gallagher

AP LIT

26 November 2010

True or Untrue Grit Analysis

In the short story of True or Untrue Grit By Laura Chester, the author transports

the reader into the kooky and zany dream of the protagonist, Nora. In this parallel

dimension of dreams, the main character finds herself immersed in situations that are

downr, if the context of events were set in reality. The oddity of the situation is that Nora

seems to take the eccentric characters and atypical mirages in her dream with a puzzling

calm. However, Chester uses the symbolic gesture of the dream coupled with the main

character’s attitude towards it to drive her social critique on popular culture, American

pop culture to be specific. Chester utilizes the cliché of the dream being representative of

a person’s suppressed desires and or secrets to unveil the arrogant and extravagant

ignorance that has consumed people in the modern age, however even more surprising is

human tendency attempting to maintain a life of blissful ignorance even in the face of

truth.

In the first section of the short story, Chester plays up the pompous notion of

‘perfection’ and mocks Nora’s exorbitant attitude towards her seemingly flawless life.

Nora is situated inside the confines of her newly built mansion facing the “perfectly

shaped, symmetrical (13)” mountain that has never seemed to have struck her attention
during daylight hours. The idea of a mountain being perfectly ‘symmetrical’ is juxtaposed

with its connotations of being rustic and being naturally beautiful. A mountain, found in

nature, is grand and majestic with a multitude of different depths and dimensions shaped

and constructed through the hands of Mother Nature. So to take the ‘natural-esque’

component out of the mountain and replace it with something ‘perfectly symmetric’

seems to place a generic and plastic aesthetic on this mountain that Nora seems to be

captivated by. The notion of an ultimate perfection and beauty is extenuated further as

Nora describes the night sky with its “amphitheatre (13)” of stars as almost having her

own “planetarium (13)”. There is irony in that statement as Nora suggests that the natural

skyline of stars resembles a man-made planetarium- a symbol of a plastic aesthetic, when

in reality it should really be vice versa and the planetarium should resemble the stars in

the night. Chester carves out her argument in these subtle remarks as to demonstrate our

fondness for a certain standard ‘beauty’- however it is a beauty so generic and

insubstantial in comparison to the real beauties found in nature. Our interpretations of

what is beautiful and what is perfect are so skewed, and truthfully, fake.

As the story is elaborated further, the appearance of the mysterious and obscure

tribal man is introduced, the short story’s most compelling supporting character, the

strange Indian (Native American) man. The appearance of the character and Nora’s

attitude towards him confirms an air of ignorance that bounds the innocent yet ignorant

protagonist. Nora refers to him as Grit- her decision based upon the disdain she had found

within his appearance. She regards the Native American as a “Real Live Indian (15)”

completely oblivious of her faux pas of referring Native Americans as ‘Indians’ as they

are not the indigenous peoples of India. The phrase, ‘real live Indian’ also conveys a
sense of regard toward the Native American as if he were not a human being, but a

coveted specimen of some sort. Nora strips away the Native American’s humanity, which

in turn displays her insensitivity to people and things outside her own realm of wants and

desires. Chester uses the Native American as first totem pole towards her greater message

of human ignorance. Her condescension is projected further upon him as she referred to

his Apache descendants as “yelping (16)” men riding across the valley. It is clear at this

point in the short story that Grit is a symbol of a wild and unruliness that does not meet

the standards in Nora’s world. Grit is a trespasser not only to her estate but onto her

values of living- shallow values to say the least. For he is symbolic of everything that

Nora finds him incredibly distasteful in terms of appearance and speech. He is the

blemish to her shiny bubble of ‘perfection’ per say. To add insult to mockery, Nora’s

estate adopted the name ‘Manzano’, Spanish for ‘apple’ because Apaches used to raise

the orchards for apples. Her minuscule amount of knowledge regarding Apache history

have been diminished to ‘apple raids’, for it is not even important to consider the fact

that her estate has been built on Native American “holy ground”. Nora’s complete

oblivion towards the sensitivity of Grit and the integrity of history demonstrates the rich

veil of ignorance humans have towards matters outside of their personal concern.

The dream contains vast amounts of symbolic ignorance, however to magnify the

scope of the dream further, Nora’s dream is so blatantly ridiculous, her dream really is a

manifestation of the ignorance seems to engulf her in her own reality. In her dreams,

there are triggers to indicate that Nora’s dream is an allusion to the life she leads in New

York City. Her estate named Manzano, is the Spanish word for apple, indicating New

York’s classic nickname of the Big Apple. There is a point in the short story where Nora
comment’s on Grit’s attire asking if it were from “Sick-Sack Avenue”- a clear indication

of New York’s coveted fashion district of Saks on Fifth Avenue. The dialogue between

Nora and Grit satirizes the superficiality that is present within Nora’s own reality- a

superficiality based upon a culture that prizes appearances and materialistic things over

knowledge and self worth. This is a clear criticism of America’s mainstream pop culture

and our fixation with extravagance and glamour. There is a point in the story when Nora

insists that her “40 acre” estate was not big enough- an ironic litote to highlight her

arrogance, yet also shining light on the deteriorating state of the human condition.

Nora’s fixation on this ideal of perfection is elaborated further as she tends to

idealize figures in her dream. She regularly comments on how she finds her contractor to

be like the ideal and “perfect husband” as he is “consistently agreeable” and always

making “endless adjustments” for her. Her fascination for the perfect and the ideal is

indicative of an insecurity that has been breeding, that her life has become quite

unsatisfactory and empty in the face of the superficiality of the modern age- her own

shallowness as well. Nora’s dream was a segway into becoming enlightened with her

reality. Her dream had just been a manifestation of all the complications she found within

her life, it was an conscious attempt by her subconscious to have her dream be an outlet

for all her angst.

The dream is the realization that ultimately the strive for perfection is nearly

impossible, and throughout the quest to obtain this forced illusion of beauty, Nora has

become transfixed within her own ignorant and exorbitant ways. The dream even though

Nora has questioned its ‘reality’ many times has become more or less the truth which

Nora has become. Her reality is more like the allusion in which material aspects and
generic aesthetics has consumed and diluted her life. Whereas the dream does nothing but

reveal the true nature of the human condition, that people use their warm blanket of

blissful ignorance to shield themselves away from the emptiness that has become weaved

and fabricated into their reality.

regards the Native American as a “Real Live Indian (15)” completely oblivious of her

faux pas of referring Native Americans as ‘Indians’ as they are not the indigenous peoples
of India. The phrase, ‘real live Indian’ also conveys a sense of regard toward the Native

American as if he were not a human being, but a coveted specimen of some sort. Nora

strips away the Native American’s humanity, which in turn displays her insensitivity to

people and things outside her own realm of wants and desires. Chester uses the Native

American as first totem pole towards her greater message of human ignorance. Nora’s

ignorance to the Native is parallel to how humans regard things in which they find

foreign or strange. People tend to label and make a mockery of things in which they have

obtained little knowledge to. To magnify the situation further, Nora’s display of

minuscule information about Native Americans suggest that humans tend to label and

categorize things we do not know as a sort of defense mechanism to ease our own

uncertainties. Nora supplements her knowledge about the Native American with

information from her neighbor, commenting on how her “neighbor had been right (15).”

As Nora names her Native American ‘Grit’- yet again another display of mockery of the

Native American’s heritage