Quinn Suydam -- All the Pretty Horses
   
   The main body of your essay is a good discussion of the way women actually do
   play very important roles in the plot of All the Pretty Horses.  However, the
   first and last paragraphs basically include too much repetition of the prompt
   for this essay topic and not enough of your own thoughts about what you are writing 
   about. The final paragraph, in particular, is quite weak. It does not function
   the way a good conclusion should -- it does not really summarize what you have 
   developed through the body of the essay because it is so terse.
   
   Some more specific comments:
   
   1)  In the first paragraph, "can fall victim to this particular criticism"
       is a strange choice of words.  Instead of saying the novel "fall[s] victim to" 
       the criticism, saying something like "to some extent, that criticism applies
       to All the Pretty Horses as well"
   2)  Starting at the bottom of page 1 and going over onto page 2:  "authors most
       likely do not involve women in battle scenes in order to highlight the 
       'position' of women in society at the time" -- I'm not sure why you put
       position in quotes there.  Also, I don't follow what you meant by "highlighting
       the position of women."  Did you mean they did not put women in battle scenes
       because they were trying to show how little influence women had?  That seems
       like a stretch to me.  If you meant that they were just following the typical
       roles that men and women had in that society, then I would agree. But you could 
       explain that more clearly.  
   3)  "Alfonsa tells Alejandra that she will pay for John Grady Cole and Rawlins release"
       is not quite correct grammatically -- either say "will pay for John Grady Cole and
       Rawlins to be released" or "will pay for John Grady Cole's and Rawlins' release"
   4)  The sentence "John Grady Cole loves the ranch and does not want a new life so he 
       decides to run away" seems almost contradictory the way you state it--after all, 
       wouldn't running away mean that he would be getting a new life whether he wanted
       it or not?  The issue, I think, is what the "new life" actually is. This could
       be explained more clearly.
   5)  "Alfonsa takes on an important role as an antagonist in the action of the story" -- 
       exactly, and there's no clearer expression of that than the scene where they
       are playing chess together(!)  It would have been good to mention that scene and
       analyze how they interact.
       
   Content: B+
   
   Mechanics: A-