Brendan Evitts -- Benjamin Button

  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. It's 
  a way to get us to laugh about the indignities of aging.  He 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."    

  Your essay relating to this idea from the film "The Curious Case of Benjamin 
  Button"  has some very good points.  You do a good job of pointing out 
  ways that Benjamin's story essentially shows that what Twain is saying is 
  not true at all on the literal level.   There's also a key issue that you are
  "dancing around" -- you clearly understand this, but never really state explicitly 
  so you can't really capitalize on it in the other things you are saying.  If *everyone* 
  was aging "in reverse" together, then that would be normal and there wouldn't be 
  any story.  But an individual living "in reverse" in a world of people aging in the 
  normal direction 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.  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 physically 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 
  around you that really matters for how things play out in this story. 

  Some writing comments.  Each of these by itself is a relatively small thing, but
  the cumulative effect is to make your essay seem a bit carelessly-written.

  Word choice: "goading for a laugh" -- I think you meant "trying to provoke a laugh"
  or something like that

  "child birth" is one word: "childbirth"

  Punctuation:  "... a suitable set of stairs to place Ben on; the steps of an elderly 
  home " is not correct because a semicolon is used to separate clauses that could
  stand on their own as separate sentences.  You want a colon or a dash of some type
  here.  

  "In a traditional newborns life ... "  should be "In a traditional newborn's life ... "
  (a possessive)
 
  Also, the use of "traditional" here and later on in the phrase "Ben’s untraditional 
  nature" isn't the best choice of words.  The words "odd" or "peculiar" or "unusual"
  are probably closer to the mark to indicate how different Ben's situation and
  life are.  

  I am not sure what you mean by saying that living "with a finite age of death
  removes the anonymity of life"  Look up "anonymity" -- it means a lack of 
  identifying individual characteristics, or a state of being unknown because of
  such a lack.  

  "we do not see how Ben would have went about such interaction" is not right 
  grammatically -- should be "... how Ben would have gone about ... "



  Content -- B+

  Structure/Mechanics -- B