Katherine Elacqua -- Life's Unavoidable Hardships

  This is generally a very good paper about "Benjamin Button."  I have some
  comments, though. You say on page 2, "In the movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin 
  Button, the main character, Benjamin, progresses through life in the direction that 
  Mark Twain would prefer."  In thinking about the Mark Twain quotation that was part 
  of the prompt for this assignment, I think it's necessary to recall that Twain was 
  first and foremost a "humorist" and a satirist -- his first goal in almost everything 
  he said and wrote was *to make people laugh* (at others and at themselves) 
  and then to get them to think about how silly a lot of their preconceptions 
  and actions are.   So it seems to me that his idea that aging in reverse 
  would lead to an "infinitely happier life" is not a serious proposal (and you 
  did not really treat it that way earlier on in your discussion, either). It's 
  a way to get us to laugh about the indignities of aging.  Twain wants us to think 
  about whether being young is really any better than being old and whether life 
  really would be any better "in reverse."  It would probably be better to say
  something like "... that Mark Twain says he would prefer in this quotation."  

  There's also a key issue that you have not really addressed. At the bottom 
  of page 2 you consider what would happen if *everyone* was aging 
  "in reverse."  If so, that would be normal and there wouldn't be any story or 
  difference in Benjamin Button's experience.  But I think you also need to
  consider the effects on an individual living "in reverse" in a world of people 
  aging in the normal direction.  Benjamin, or any other person in the same situation,
  faces extreme obstacles at almost every step of the way.  Even though he or she 
  might have many of the same physical-age-appropriate experiences as others along 
  the way, his or her physical appearance and condition will always be out of step 
  with his or her mental age *from the point of view of those other people*.  Think 
  of Benjamin and Daisy's early encounter in the old-age home.  No one (with the 
  exception of Daisy herself) can see past the fact that he looks like an old man
  molesting a young girl. Then, except for one brief window, Benjamin and Daisy 
  are always out of step because he seems like an older man trying to court a 
  high-spirited younger woman.  And then at the other end of his life, Benjamin 
  feels that he has to leave Daisy and Caroline because he will be too young to 
  be Caroline's father.  So it's not just the direction of aging by itself that 
  is the really important point.  It's how that direction of aging makes you in 
  step or out of step with everyone else that really matters for how things play out 
  in this story.  
  

  Your writing is generally very good but I found several word choice issues: 
 
  "plenty of issues would rise if this were the case" should be 
  "plenty of issues would *arise* if this were the case"

  "euphoria of aging in reverse" -- "euphoria" an intense state of excitement
  and happiness, so by its nature it usually cannot last a long time

  "eminent hardships at eighty" -- "eminent" sounds odd here.  Did you mean
  "imminent" (about to happen)?

  

  Content -- A-

  Structure/Mechanics -- A-