Lucky Ned - True Grit VIII

"'I saw Billy was dead when he was struck. I thought Haze might have made it. He was tough as boot leather. I am sorry for him. . .[Billy] should never have been there. There was nothing I could do for him" (Portis 188).

After Portis has spent a good amount of time establishing Lucky Ned's reputation in readers' minds, he suddenly tears that reputation down when Mattie meets Lucky Ned and has a conversation with him. From his reputation, one would expect Lucky Ned to be harsh and easily angered, not generally kind and sympathetic toward others. Portis may be using Lucky Ned to explore reputations and how they can often give a wrong impression of a person; although Lucky Ned is white, Portis's explorations with reputation are very similar to his explorations with race and the reputation a race has.

Portis, Charles, and Donna Tartt. True Grit. New York, NY: Overlook, 2010. Print.