True Grit

During the transactional negotiations between Mattie Ross and Rooster Cogburn, Mattie attempts to hire him to hunt down Tom Chaney. They discuss payment while he is playing cards and drinking whiskey, and Rooster demands a significantly higher price than the government reward. In doing so, he uses verbal irony: 

“If I’m going up against Ned Pepper I will need a hundred dollars,” he says, adding that he’ll want fifty in advance. “You are trying to take advantage of me,” Mattie says, to which Rooster replies, “I am giving you my children’s rate.”

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Mattie Ross’s bitter reflection upon being abandoned by the outlaws highlights the situational irony of her predicament, directly contrasting the U.S. Marshal’s fearsome reputation for "true grit" with his actual incompetence. Mattie specifically sought out Rooster because he was known as the "meanest and most ruthless marshal"—a "pitiless man, double-tough"—who she expected would be their "greatest asset and protector" in the dangerous Indian Territory.

However, the opposite unfolds. Rooster's recklessness, drunkenness, and carelessness becomes their greatest liability. Mattie angrily chronicles his failures after she is captured by Tom Chaney. In Chapter 7, Mattie thinks as Rooster and LaBoeuf appear to retreat: 

Who was to blame? Deputy Marshal Rooster Cogburn! The gabbing drunken fool had made a mistake of four miles and led us directly into the robbers’ lair. A keen detective! Yes, and in an earlier state of drunkenness he had placed faulty caps in my revolver, causing it to fail me in a time of need. That was not enough; now he had abandoned me in this howling wilderness to a gang of cutthroats [...]! Was this what they called grit in Fort Smith? We called it something else in Yell County!

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