Chapter Four

So today's chapter is primarily an introduction to LaBoeuf, which makes me wonder about Portis's odd chaptering. Why, for instance, does the last chapter provide so many different scenes, while this chapter only has the dinner scene that introduces LaBoeuf? Perhaps it's a daily sort of arrangement. I believe, if I remember correctly, that the last chapter, even though it had several different scenes, basically incorporated one day's activities. Is that right? Yes, I believe it is. It makes for an odd arrangement, though. Some long chapters and some short.

Anyway, today's chapter is primarily an introduction to LaBoeuf, which I have a feeling is going to further support Mattie's regionalism. She is an Arkansan above all, which brings up the other topic of the chapter. Politics. Mattie never tires of the subject.

So in this chapter Mattie steps back into her role as narrator on the first page of the chapter. We can, I believe, accurately date the year that she's narrating from by the events she's talking about. The narrator-Mattie (as opposed to the 14-year-old Mattie of the story) is speaking from 1928, I believe. We should also be able to figure out the exact year the events in the novel are supposed to take place from the Fort Smith politics, but I haven't done that yet. We can be pretty sure that the narrator-Mattie is supposedly telling the story in 1928 because she's talking about the possible election of the democratic candidate for President, Al Smith. She is not afraid of Al Smith "for a minute." Even though he's "wet" (1928 is still Prohibition times) and even though he's a Catholic and Irish. People were still worried about the latter issue in 1960 when John Kennedy ran. What the 1928-narrator-Mattie doesn't tell you is that Smith's running mate was Joseph Robinson from . . . you guessed it: Arkansas. Of course the constant-Arkansan Mattie would support that ticket. That's Al Smith's picture at the top of the post, by the way.