Kong Xiong -- Questionable Attributes

   Ideally, when you use the "others might say" maneuver in a paper, the idea is
   to say "here's another possible interpretation, but I don't believe it is right
   because ... ."  Then you give your own reasoning or evidence for drawing
   the opposite conclusion.  Your paper is much more inconclusive about the 
   questions you are addressing, and while that is OK, I think you might have
   been able to come to a more definite point of view with some additional 
   consideration.  

   I also don't quite see how John Grady fits the idea of a tragic hero with a
   tragic flaw, and I don't really agree that he cannot balance right and
   wrong. I think he's thrust into some situations where he has to act in 
   self-defence (the knife fight in the prison, for instance).  It's a 
   traumatic experience and he questions whether he did the right thing, but
   I think almost anyone would agree that he had to do that to stay alive
   and it was justifiable for that reason.  His decision to go back and
   retrieve the horses and pay back the Captain for killing Blevins might
   be questioned because he's taking the law into his own hands.  But he's
   acting out of his sense of justice; it's not that he "cannot balance
   right and wrong."  After the fact, he wonders whether he did the right
   thing there too, which is perhaps even more understandable

   You say (toward the bottom of your first page) that "The judge seems to realize 
   that John Grady takes responsibility of what he has done and claims too much 
   credit for what he had to do."  I don't think that is what he was getting at.  
   The judge is telling John Grady that he (John Grady) is questioning aspects of 
   what he did in Mexico that are really OK (justifiable under the circumstances)
   even though John Grady is not quite willing to accept them himself without some 
   external validation.  


   Some small things:

   1) In your first paragraph:  "After it all, John Grady’s dreams of being 
      a cowboy is crushed."  What is "it"?  Also the subject "dreams" is plural 
      but the verb "is" is singular.  They should agree.  

   2) "He changes into a man that lives in reality instead of living in his 
      dreams."   "that" is not really wrong here, but "who" is preferable when 
      you're talking about a person.

   3)  "traumatizing events that mature their characters" is awkward.  "traumatizing
       events that cause their characters to mature" would be better.
       
   Content:  B+

   Mechanics:  B+