Lizzie Flynn -- People Should Not Dread Old Age

  In thinking about the Mark Twain quotation that was part of the prompt
  for this assignment, I would say 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 clear to me that his idea that aging in reverse 
  would lead to an "infinitely happier life" is not really a serious proposal. It's 
  a way to get us to laugh about the indignities of aging.  Then 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."  Even more so than the movie, the 
  Fitzgerald short story is clearly a sort of "thought experiment" testing 
  whether Twain's claim, taken literally, would be true.  And it has its 
  humorous elements too -- for instance, the mental picture of an apparently 
  16-year old boy showing up and claiming he has a commission to serve as an
  Army general in World War I seems pretty ludicrous!

  I think you're actually taking Twain too literally/seriously yourself, but your 
  essay relating to this idea from the story has many good points.  You have thought 
  deeply about the story and you have developed a strong and detailed understanding 
  of how it works and what it tries to say.  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.  
  
  I think there is one other key issue that you are "dancing around" -- I think 
  you 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 the obstacles you discuss at almost every step of the way.  Even though 
  he or she might have many of the same physical-age-appropriate experiences as other
  people, 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*.    
  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. 

  Your writing is generally excellent too.

  Content -- A-

  Structure/Mechanics -- A