Lizzie, 

   The revision of your paper on the Odyssey is a very good improvement over
the first version.  The main issue I have with what you say is your attempts
to answer the question "why do we read works like the Odyssey?"  On page 2, 
you say  "The point of The Odyssey is to teach the reader what it takes to be 
a hero, and courage is essential to that."  I think there is a lot more going
on here than you are allowing for.  And later in your last paragraph, you 
say  "People read his story for perspective on their own lives and problems, 
and to realize that if Odysseus can maintain these virtues consistently for 
twenty years, people today should be able to incorporate at least some of them 
into their daily lives."   Do you mean this is true of all people who read this 
poem?  Some people?  Are you saying we should read the poem that way?  This 
is not too clear and it weakens the conclusion of your paper, especially 
because I think it's very reasonable to disagree strongly with that statement, 
while accepting most of what you said earlier.

   There may be some people who approach reading the Odyssey from the perspective
you seem to be advocating.  But that's certainly not the case for everyone, and 
taking that sort of approach to a work of literature (and maybe even implying 
that everyone should take that approach, unless I'm reading too much into the 
sentence I quoted above) would be saying readers should be self-centered to an
undesirable degree.  To be clear, I'm not saying that *you* are being self-centered; 
I just mean that the reasons you are giving for people to read these works are 
self-centered reasons and that those reasons are not the whole story.   

   Not all literature is there to teach us "life lessons" and there are many other 
reasons to read works like this one besides looking for instruction for ourselves
about virtuous living. A few such reasons might be: to gain insight into a past 
culture, to follow and get to immersed in a really exciting adventure story, to 
appreciate the collective artistry of the bards and poets who produced such a 
detailed and rich picture of a fantastic world different from ours, and maybe 
simply to make the acquaintance of a complicated and recognizably human being 
with some heroic qualities, but also some real shortcomings and failings.   

   To see what I mean about this, in your first draft, you mentioned the scene at 
the very end of Book 24 as an example of Odysseus's bravery.  I asked you what 
actually happens right at the end of the story and how are things resolved: Is that 
really only an example of bravery, or is it something more or else? For instance, is 
it an instance of a fierce and angry man being held back from making an even bigger 
mess of things? The fact that Athena has to step in and restrain Odysseus from 
killing the relatives of the suitors he has already massacred seems to me to be
a very important point.  You say Odysseus's homecoming is "successful and victorious,"
but doesn't this final scene put a different spin on things? Focusing only on the 
outwardly heroic aspects of a character like Odysseus leaves out a big part of
his humanity.  

Content/Evidence

B+

Structure/Mechanics

A-