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Joyce Peer Review:

Thesis Follow Through:

Though as the story progresses into his darker days, I will use Nol Carrolls definition of

a monster in his essay The Nature of Horror to turn Neville from a hero into a monster

carefully through the course of the book. Carrolls definition states that a monster is an

extraordinary character in an ordinary world, threatening, and impure. Once that is demonstrated

I will now state that point of view is complicated because I have been able to use these particular

elements essentially establishing Robert Neville as an exception, which a monster always is. I

will prove that through one on one time, the base of understanding and sympathy between two

people can genuinely be established and only from then will a relation and connection be built

and forgiveness will be possible.

1. In the beginning of the novel, Robert Neville is presented as the protagonist hero that

attracts much sympathy.

2. Carefully through the course of the first half of the novel, Mathesons portrayal of Neville

turns him into a monster according to noted art historian Nol Carrolls definition of a

monster as being threatening and impure (55).

3. Matheson displays how point of view is complicated through the change in perception of

Neville.
4. Because of the change in view on Mathesons depiction of Neville, Nevilles existence as

the monster becomes contradictory to the readers reception.

5. With the ambivalence on Nevilles character in question, Matheson brings Ruth into the

picture as a hero.
6. By the establishment that Ruth is the heroic figure in the grand scheme of things,

Matheson uses Ruth as a symbol of hope for Neville.

7. The use of one on one time creates understanding and sympathy.
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8. Understanding results in peace and forgiveness which is Mathesons overall message hes

trying to communicate.

You do a nice job of weaving the thesis throughout the essay, but there are also some things in

your essay that are not mentioned in your thesis. For example, the heroic aspects about Ruth and

Neville are mentioned a lot in the essay, but arent really talked about much in the thesis.

Paragraph cohesion:

Yes, each body paragraph focuses on one main topic. It is clear what the topic of each

paragraph is. In the seventh body paragraph, you did a nice job relating every sentence to the

sentence before it to create cohesion. I dont see many transitional words at all, which is

something you might want to consider. Yes, there is enough development of the idea and enough

detail. In your sentence describing how Neville treats Ruth, the quotes from the story and your

own words became a little confusing grammar-wise for me, so Im not sure if thats something

youd like to revise. Other than that, I think its a solid paragraph.

Structure:

I like how you matched the timeline of the essay to the timeline of the storystructurally,

this keeps your essay organized in a clean way.

Paragraph:
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In your sixth paragraph, about Ruth being a symbol of hope for Neville, the sentences do

a nice job of leading to the next idea. Your last sentence, though, disrupts the structure of the

paragraph. Imagery was not mentioned in either the thesis nor the topic sentence, so imagery

came as a surprise while I was reading the paragraph. Maybe something you can do to improve

this would be to make that sentence more of a complex sentence and add in a clause before it that

helps transition the idea from symbolism to imagery.

Essay:

As to the overall structure of the essay, I dont really have much to say about any

revisions.

Academic Ethos of Writer:

One thing you could do to improve your ethos in this paper is to provide some more

historical context for the story itself and why it was written. This would make you seem more

knowledgeable about the work and would increase your ethos. Other than that, I think your

ethos in this essay is fairly adequate because you seem to know what youre talking about.

Language: Word Choice and Sentence Structure/Variety:

You have nice sentence structure throughout your essaynice complex sentence here and

there, and you balance it out nicely with short and concise sentences that reiterate your point.

Your word choice also is in favor towards your ethos, because I saw that you used vocabulary

that was beyond the scope of just casual talking.

Word Choice:
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In the topic sentence of your sixth paragraph, the word things sounds a bit general and

could be replaced with the novel or the story or something more specific. In the last

sentence of your first body paragraph, the word also could be replaced with the words in

addition followed by a comma. In your third topic sentence, the word audience should be

added in before the word reception so the reader has a clearer idea of what that paragraph will

be talking about.

Wordiness:

In the third sentence of your thesis, the clause though the story progresses into his darker

days should be cut out. In the sixth paragraph, the phrase after capturing Ruth and

interrogating her with much skepticism could be paraphrased down to after capturing Ruth and

skeptically interrogating her. Your second sentence in your fifth body paragraph seems a bit

wordy. The words to them at the end might be a bit redundant and I think it would be safe to

cut them out.

Sentence Structure/Variety:

In the fourth sentence of your third paragraph, add in a comma after the word exception

to make this sentence more grammatically correct. In your second body paragraph, the sentence

As much as Neville is threatening to the vampires, he is as threatening to himself especially

when he consumes alcohol and is in conflict with himself; due to the frustration in the science

behind the vampire bacteria could be structurally improved by replacing the semicolon with a

period and separating these two thoughts into two sentences. In the fourth sentence of your first

paragraph, you need to rephrase it so that it is properly parallel. Since you said taking the time

to collect garlic, youd also have to say boarding up his windows, and laboriously caring for
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his house. This isnt the only way to fi this sentence, but whichever way you pick to fix it, you

have to make sure that your dependent clauses have parallelism.

Works Cited
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Carrol, Nol. The Nature of Horror. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol.

46, No. 1. (Autumn, 1987), pp. 51-59. Print.

Magistrale, Tony, and Michael A. Morrison. A Dark Night's Dreaming: Contemporary

American Horror Fiction. Columbia, S.C: University of South Carolina Press, 1996.

Print.

Zimbardo, Philip. "What Makes a Hero?" Greater Good. University of California,

Berkeley, 18 Jan. 2011. Web. Accessed 14 Feb. 2017. <

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/what_makes_a_hero>.