Paolo Prendushi -- A Strange Case of Discovery

  Your essay on the assigned passage from Wild has a lot of good things.  Your 
  conclusion that "the passage on page 189 serves as the moment when her journey
  within herself really starts" is OK, but I think maybe a better way to say it is that
  this is when she starts to realize that the kinds of changes she wanted to make
  by going on her PCT hike are actually happening and that, as she says, "in getting
  [her]self here, [she] had done right."  As you point out, she says she misses 
  certain aspects of her old life, but "does not want to go back to it either."  
  
  I would disagree that she is "indifferent" about that former life at this point, 
  though.  (You use that word in the paragraph at the bottom of page 1.)
  Her statement before the one you quote: "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, or 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.  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.    


  Your writing is generally good, but I have a few suggestions about wordings and usage.  

  In the first sentence I think you meant "marveled at." 

  On page 2, "For all intensive purposes" is not correct.  The phrase is "for all intents
  and purposes."  (Yes, "intents" together with "purposes" might seem a bit redundant because 
  their meanings are pretty close.  But this is a stock phrase that got standardized 
  some time in the past and this is just the way it is.)  Be careful about things like this 
  where you might be misunderstanding phrases because you hear them incorrectly (or are 
  reproducing mistakes you have heard made by others).  

  On page 3 (and another similar place later) the word "prior" in "As Strayed mentioned 
  prior, ... " is not used correctly.  Use "prior" only when you are saying "prior to 
  [something else]" and the [something else] is explicitly mentioned.  When the 
  [something else] is only implied, "before" or "earlier" are the standard choices.   

  The quotation "ripping beneath my thinning flesh in ways they never had" from page 190 
  has a typo -- it should be "rippling."  

  The sentence "A new positive energy for Strayed, she reveals to readers how she feels 
  not only mentally, but the physical embodiment of her new outlook" from your page 2 does 
  not really work for two reasons -- the first and last clauses do not fit with the rest 
  of the sentence.  The type of clause you wrote first would usually refer to the noun
  or pronoun right after the comma, but your clause does not refer to the "she."  Then
  the last clause is not parallel to the central one.  I think you meant something like 
  "Strayed's new positive energy is the physical embodiment of her new outlook and it 
  reveals her mental state to readers."    (Note that I got rid of the 
  "not only ... but ... "  It's easy to fall into overusing that construction.  
  I would say to save it for places where you want to say that the second thing is 
  somehow really important and maybe unexpected.)

  Finally, in your sentence "After all, this journey was a means for finding herself in 
  the world, as everything she knew came to a crumble,"  "came to a crumble" is not
  idiomatic.  You can also use "crumble" as a verb, so "... everything she knew crumbled."
  would be better.  

  Content/Evidence -- B

  Structure/Mechanics -- B