David Mendoza -- Hero or Vigilante

   David, this is the best writing I have seen from you this year and
   I want to encourage you to keep up the good work!

   In terms of the ideas in the paper, I think you have made some good
   connections but that you might be underestimating two aspects of 
   the story.  First, John Grady only kills the "cuchillero" in
   self-defence.  I would say he bought the knife because he knew or
   thought that the attack was coming.  He probably hoped he wouldn't
   have to use it.  But when he found himself alone in the cafeteria
   and the cuchillero attacked him first, he was not afraid to use it
   because he really wanted to stay alive.  I don't believe
   most people would say that killing in that situation is "murder."
   It's more like "justifiable homicide" and if you could convince 
   a jury that the circumstances were as described in the novel, you
   would never get convicted for murder for doing something like that.
   Killing in self-defence when you are attacked is recognized as one 
   situation where killing is legally permitted. 

   Another aspect I think you should think about is the question of
   whether John Grady has turned into a vigilante who takes justice
   into his own hands when he goes back to retrieve the horses and 
   "pay back" the Captain for killing Blevins.  I agree that he is
   literally a vigilante for doing that.  However, I think Cormac McCarthy 
   wants us to ask ourselves whether he was actually doing something that was 
   *more just* than the sort of "justice" the Captain (and the legal 
   authorities running the prison in Saltillo) had carried out.
   Note that John Grady could easily have killed the Captain too, but
   he does not do that and lets him go with the "hombres del pais".
   If legal authorities are absent, or corrupt and unjust, is a 
   private citizen ever justified in taking the law into his or her 
   own hands?  This the foundational question of the whole
   Western genre, in a way.

   Finally, the fact that John Grady is not really sure about either
   of these actions he has taken (when he goes back to see the judge
   in Texas) seems to indicate to me that he is wrestling with some
   of these questions himself.  But we only figure out what to do in
   the future by asking those questions, so even if there are no "concrete
   answers" it's important that those questions do get asked!

   
   A couple of smaller things:

   (1)  From the bottom of your page 1:  "John Grady got into a deadly fight 
        in the penitentiary known as “Cuchillero”."  The "cuchillero" is
        the knife-man he fights; I don't think the prison has a name.  

   (2)  "In the end, the borders between laws give birth to vigilantes and heroes."
        This is *really good,* but I think you could delete "the" before borders
        to get a sentence that's even more powerful.

   (3)  In the sentence after the previous one: "In this case the border between 
        right and wrong are face to face," the subject "border" is singular but
        the verb "are" is plural; they should agree in number.  Also, I'm not
        sure what you mean by "face to face" here.  

   Content: A-

   Mechanics:  B+