COMMENTARY FOR LILY

I feel you could change the title. On the sheet our teacher gave us, it states that the title should reflect somehow that you are writing an analysis, but you do not have to outright say “I’m doing an analysis.” He said that it shouldn’t be similar to the title of the piece you were analyzing. On your thesis I like that it was two sentences. It was very clear on your position, but I feel that it could be stronger if you specifically mention which appeals he used i.e. pathos, logos, and ethos. In each of the paragraphs, if you would want to, I think it might benefit to give a short definition. For one it helps the audience know what you are talking about. However this is an English class and whoever reads it probably knows what they are. The structure of your essay is for the most part clear, although, I feel that the second paragraph on the second page could benefit elsewhere. It sounds mostly like ethos because it appeals to the author’s being knowledgeable so I think you could try to fit it in with the ethos, but obviously not in one big paragraph. You transition your paper well and it flows quite nicely. If you wanted it to flow even more then I would suggest more specific transitions on page three.  

Your paragraphs about the appeals specifically state how the audience reacts to each and I feel you could elaborate more if you wanted to. Looking closer at the logical appeal paragraph I think this might be the “hole” in his argument you were talking about. If it is or is not then I suggest stating in the topic sentence something along the lines of a hole or discrepancy to let readers know that this is the part the author was not completely successful on. I feel ethos is your strongest paragraph, but stated earlier that other paragraph should become part of it. The pathos paragraph might benefit from stating how your examples are pathos like with his use of narrative and how he uses the language appeals to the audience or something like that. In the second paragraph on page three I think you might want to reword that last sentence. I got a bit confused when reading it. Maybe show that these people are opposed to him and that he is showing fairness to their viewpoints especially since they are soldiers.