Rooster Character Analysis

money, baby sister, but thank you for the cigarette.” From the beginning of the film Rooster is displayed as a rough character. In the book he does come off as rough, but he is still willing to at least talk with Mattie about her offer over super, while in the film he closes the conversation and leaves Mattie to her search for a suitable marshal to find Tom Chaney. Mattie Ross is another character that displays more “grit” in the movie than in the novel. The characteristic that gives Mattie the definition of “grit” is her extreme tenacity to have things done her way. From the beginning Mattie comes off as a very head strong young woman, but there is a discrepancy in her representation between the film and the novel. The Coen brothers emphasized
this point very early in Mattie’s character. The first time Mattie is introduced in the film she is displeased with the price for the embalming and coffin for her father. She asks the mortician why the price was so high.
Mattie: Put the lid on. Why is it so much?
Undertaker: The quality of the casket and of the embalming. The loifloik appearance requires time and art. And the chemicals come dear. The particulars are in your bill. If you would loik to kiss him it would be all roight.
Mattie: No. Thank you. The spirit has flown. Your wire said fifty dollars.
Undertaker: You did not specify he was to be shipped.
Mattie: Well sixty dollars is every cent we have. It leaves nothing for our board. Yarnell, you can see to the body’s transport to the train station and accompany it home, and I will have to sleep here tonight.

However, in the novel, she does not finagle the price with the mortician. Yarnell, a family friend of the Ross’s, disagrees with Mattie in this matter. “Yarnell took me outside the office. He said, ‘Miss Mattie, that man trying to stick you.’ I said, ‘Well, we will not haggle with him.’ He said, ‘That is what we counting on.’ I said, ‘We will let it go.’” From the start of the film, Mattie is bartering with people. Her tenacity and grit only show more as the film goes on and while she does display much grit in the novel, it is shown more so in the film.
The character LeBeouf is also displayed with more “grit” in the film by the Coen brothers.
In the book, LeBeouf is with Cogburn and Mattie throughout their entire journey to find Tom Chaney, but in the film he splits off with them until they run into him later when they are trying to ambush Ned Pepper and his gang of outlaws. After some time, LeBeouf has become disheartened by their inability to track Chaney and leaves Mattie and Cogburn a second time. However, later in the film when Mattie is taken by Chaney and Ned Pepper, LeBeouf hears a gunshot, turns around and goes back to find them. That son of a bitch went right back and who does he run into? Rooster Cogburn, with whom he devised a plan to get Mattie from Chaney and Pepper. LeBeouf could have easily kept riding back to Texas after he heard the gunshot go off but he did not. Earlier, I defined “grit” as another meaning for “courage” or “resolve.” Not only did LeBeouf save Mattie from Tom Chaney but the Coen brothers emphasized the “grit” of his return by having him leave in the first place. Although grittier characteristics seem to be incorporated into the characters of the film, it can be seen in other aspects of the film as well. Another addition of “grit” that the Coen brothers used in their film to incorporate the rough, gritty feeling of the west is an emphasis on corpses. One of the first encounter with dead bodies that is in the film is the mMortuary where Mattie spends the night, which she does not do in the
book.