Mary, 

     Your essay says far too much about essentially irrelevant topics and doesn't spend 
   anywhere near enough time addressing the questions I was getting at in "prompt 2."  
   For instance, your opening paragraph seems to be devoted to the question of whether 
   the moral climax in Chapter 31 is "out of place" or "irregular."  (And by the way, 
   by the "moral climax," I meant Huck's decision to tear up the letter to Miss Watson
   and "go to Hell" because he couldn't stand to send Jim back into slavery!) I couldn't tell 
   quite what you were getting at there.  If you were thinking that the climax should
   come at the very end, that is a different question from what I was asking.  And in fact
   many novels have a concluding section, or "coda" (to borrow a musical term), after a 
   climax to round things out and come to a conclusion.  So Twain's structure itself is 
   not at all unusual and that was not the main question.  

     What I wanted you to think about was whether what happens in the rest of the book (from 
   Chapter 32 to the end) is a good conclusion to the story following Huck's key moral 
   decision (to tear up the letter to Miss Watson).  That last section seems to leave the 
   moral of the story behind and go in a very different direction.  This is an interesting 
   question also because the last section of the book has such a different tone 
   from the rest.  The appearance of Tom Sawyer and his wild schemes to free Jim from 
   imprisonment on the Phelps farm seem like a whole different story from what goes before 
   to a lot of readers.  I wanted you to think about why that might be so and whether you 
   could see that section as a reasonable conclusion to the story.  Can you understand why 
   Twain finished the book that way?  Is it simple comic relief, for instance?  Is 
   Twain making a point by contrasting how Huck has grown with how Tom has not grown?
   Or is it really just something he "tacked on" because he needed an ending?

     You use three pretty long paragraphs on pages 1 and 2 to discuss the roles of the 
   King and the Duke, who are out of the picture after Chapter 31.  So that part of your 
   essay is not "on point" for the main question.    

     The only section that really addresses the issues I wanted you to think about is 
   the paragraph at the top of page 3.  But most of what you say there is that the action 
   is different and "fast pace" (should be "fast-paced").  You just start to get into the 
   contrast between Huck's simple direct plan to free Jim and Tom Sawyer's outlandish schemes 
   when you stop.  
  

   Content/Evidence -- C+

   Structure/Mechanics -- B+