Lizzie Flynn -- "Every Step of The Way"

  You have done a very good job of analyzing the assigned passage on page 189
  of "Wild" and I can tell that you really understand most of what Cheryl 
  Strayed is trying to say there.   The one place where I think there's room
  to disagree is the way you say "Cheryl Strayed initially begins her journey 
  on the Pacific Coast Trail in an effort to be the woman she used to be," but
  then changes and realizes that she needs to "drive forward and become a 
  new person."  I think it's actually a bit more subtle than that because 
  the changes she wants to make will actually make her more like who she 
  thought she was before her mother died and everything fell apart.  In other words, 
  the "getting back to who she was before" theme really never goes away because 
  it refers to the fact that she wants to get back to her state (maybe really 
  the self-image she had) before she more or less lost touch with her family, 
  before her infidelities, before the drug use, etc.  But I think you are 
  exactly right that this instant is when she realizes the hike was the right
  thing to do to achieve the transformation she knew she had to make.  

  A few other comments: The Lao Tzo quotation, "The journey of a thousand miles 
  begins with a single step" is very apt for what you want to say.  It's a shame 
  that that quotation has been used so much that it ends up seeming a bit
  trite when people use it now.  (It might not seem that way to you, but trust
  me, it has appeared in *lots* of other student papers over the years, in lots 
  of popular self-help books, greeting cards, ... )  

  You say that "Throughout the memoir, Cheryl is awed by the beauty of the natural 
  world around her."  There are some passages like that, but maybe not as many
  as you would expect if you really go back and look for them.  Actual straight-out
  descriptions of the landscape are pretty rare and pretty short when she does 
  them.  Part of that might have to do with the circumstances of the trip and
  how she wants to tell how the hike affected her, not what she saw on the hike. 
  After all, it's not a book about the PCT or about hiking. It's really a book 
  about an episode in her life and how it changed her. 

  Your writing is generally very good here.  It seems as though the less formal
  style suits you better.  
 
  Very small points: There is a typo in "She is 'still the woman with the hold
  in her heart,'" from page 2.

  In your sentence "In the context of Wild by Cheryl Strayed, 
  there is no finite destination, ... " the word "finite" should probably be
  "definite."  "Finite" means "having limits or bounds."  In mathematics, a 
  finite set is one where you can count all the elements using the integers
  1, 2, ... , up to the total number of elements.  

   Content/Evidence -- A-

   Structure/Mechanics -- A-