Victoria Pierce -- (No title)

  Your introductory paragraph really only rehashes some of the ideas
  about the novel that we discussed in class.  You should be aiming
  to develop more independent thinking about our readings for your
  essays.  And I think you *did do* that later on, specifically the
  ideas that John Grady's youth was taken from him (I agree with
  that) and the idea that all of his experiences do not make him 
  a hero -- they just make him human.  But then that's what should 
  go into the introductory paragraph of your essay.  I don't know
  why or how this happened, but I have the idea that you might
  have written that first to "get started," then your ideas developed
  as you got into the paper.  There's nothing wrong with that (it's
  even what you should be aiming for in a way!).  But when it happens, 
  you will need to go back and rethink what you wrote before and
  *revise!*

  I'm not sure what you meant by saying that John Grady's character
  is "questionable" in the second paragraph.  You don't point
  out any negative aspects of that character in the rest of the 
  paragraph.  (And, actually, I think the worst thing you could say
  about him is that he's still somewhat immature at the start of
  the story.)

  The quotation from page 239 of the novel that you use on your
  page 3 is a very good one.  However if you look carefully
  at that passage, you will see that the speaker is Alfonsa, 
  *not* John Grady himself.  (It doesn't "sound like" him at all -- 
  it's too subtle and too well-spoken!)  Cormac McCarthy's choices
  about how to report direct speech mean you have to be very careful
  to identify who is speaking.

  A lot of this shows good improvement in your writing.  But
  there are a few lapses too.  For instance, I don't understand 
  your final sentence:

  "But this s a typical Western genre ending with the idea of freedom 
   and wandering but that does not make it a happy ending, it makes it a
   familiar one."  

  Aside from the problems of the lonely "s" (did you mean "is"?), this
  is a run-on sentence.  You don't need the two "but"s.   And what did 
  you mean by a "familiar ending"?

  Content:  B+

  Mechanics: B+