Mattie Ross and Little Blackie in True Grit

Tope Folarin: Rooster, who is now in full-on protect Mattie mode, gets on Little Blackie with Mattie and he rides Little Blackie, basically, to death trying to get medical care for Mattie. Donna Tartt: We galloped across the meadow where the smoky duel had lately occurred. My eyes were congested from nausea and through a tearful haze I saw the dead horses and the bodies of the bandits. The pain in my arm became intense and I commenced to cry and the tears were blown back in streams around my cheeks. Despite the load, Blackie held his head high and ran like the wind, perhaps sensing the urgency of the mission. Rooster spurred and whipped him without let. I soon passed away in a faint. Amanda Coplin: Little Blackie saves her life and at the end when he’s run into the ground, Mattie says “His heart burst and mine was broken.” I feel like the horse is so closely tied to her father. On a thematic level it just ties everything together.  It’s not obvious but you feel it when you’re reading which is so great. Ride to Death under and up Jay Jennings: There's a bit of melancholy about the whole enterprise, and even though Mattie's quest ended up as she wanted, there was a pretty severe price to pay for her, for Rooster, for LaBoeuf, and certainly for Little Blackie, her pony.  It does create this sense of the consequences of our quests, even as noble as they may be. Katherine Powers: I think there is a cost to making the ledger book straight. But that's what she had to pay for having gone into Indian territory, for having taken this on personally.  James Lee Burke: But she would do it all over again.  The price she paid was not for shooting Tom Chaney, or ensuring that eventually he was trapped by these circumstances that caused his death.  She paid the price for her principles.   Excerpt of "Ride to Dearth" composed and conducted by Carter Burwell, and orchestrated by Carter Burwell with Sonny Kompanek from the True Grit soundtrack. Used courtesy of Nonesuch Records and by permission of Paramount Allegra Music c/o Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC (ASCAP).