Alex Clark -- "Self-Discovery"

Your analysis of the assigned passage from Wild is mostly good, but there are a few 
aspects I would disagree with.  First, you say that "Strayed speaks of her life before 
the trip with indifference: she misses certain aspects, but 'does not want to go back 
to it either.'"  But her statement "That awful moment when Paul and I fell onto the 
floor and I told him the truth about my infidelities kept coming to me in waves,"
is anything but "indifferent" -- it's a genuinely intensely painful moment that she cannot
really escape (mostly because she knows she was entirely to blame for breaking up
her marriage).  

I think her emotional state at this point is much more complicated than "indifference."  
She acknowledges that she made a lot of mistakes along they way and she realizes she 
had to get away from the situations and attitudes that led her into those mistakes.  
(You address much of this later on.)  But saying she misses her old life (mostly 
her former husband, Paul, I think) but doesn't want to go back is really not 
indifference.  It's a realization that she has changed and that that part of her 
life is over.  

Also, the "I didn’t feel sad or happy. I didn’t feel proud or ashamed"  seems to me 
to be more like numbness from emotional exhaustion at the end of a struggle, or a 
realization that she has turned a corner and is now on a different path.  She knows 
that she did the right thing now by undertaking the hike, that going on the hike has 
started to pull her out of the self-destructive spiral she was in before.  But those 
problems are still too close and there's still too much for her to do for her to feel 
happy or proud of what she has done.   The "in getting myself here, I had done right" 
is the real point of the whole passage, I think.  You address that well in your second 
paragraph.

Finally, in your discussion of the passage from page 111, you say "She pretended to be
someone she was not because it was easier for her."  I don't think that's really right
as her main motivation.  I think she did what she did because she was afraid she wouldn't 
be liked by men if she didn't act flirty and "girly."  Also, I don't see that you 
connect the passage from page 111 with the assigned passage from page 189 very effectively.
What she says about her new way of interacting with men on page 111 is a different aspect 
of her journey, for sure.  But note that in the assigned passage she is actually alone.  

Most of the writing is good too, but I see you stuck really closely to passages we
discussed in class.  There are many other aspects of the story that probably relate
even more closely to this passage.  So your choice of other parts of the story to 
highlight is not as good as it could be.  

There are a number of small writing slips too.  For instance on page 2, "This name, 
she believed encompassed her situation perfectly ... " really needs a second comma 
after the "believed."  A bit later, "heroine abuse" sounds like she's abusing a
leading female character in a story, not the drug :)  Near the top of page 3, "She 
hid herself from people by pretended" should have "pretending" instead.
In the last sentence, the "The" at the start should be omitted. 

   Content/Evidence -- B

   Structure/Mechanics -- B+