Response letter

First of all, thank you for this great essay. I think you did a really good job in arguing with Haspel that there is no place for equality between the sufferings of the two sides. What I found particularly striking was how you used Haspels own argument of moral ambiguity against him, proving that at all times he was actually referring to representations of inequality, which are not ambiguous at all in the film. You have talked in you cover letter about better integrating authoritative sources in supporting the main points of your argument. What I found very powerful in supporting your thesis but that was under represented was the argument that the colonizers had been incessantly abusing the Algerian people for 130 years. When the latter were able for the first time to take a stand for themselves, of course there is no place for such thing as equality in the sufferings of the two sides. And this argument molds into supporting your thesis really well. I think you avoided spending time on it, however, because it has become rather common knowledge, through our readings, and you wanted to spend time on something that is worthwhile to argue; nevertheless, from a scholastic point of view, I feel you can add authority to your thesis nicely by employing Fanon to describe colonialism oppression and put the above argument forward in more detail. In the first building block of your argument (1st of page 2) you show the military inequality between the French and the militants. In the second block (1st of page 3), you show the inequality between the French good and bad actions. The first line is somewhat misleading though, because you say If such as great power disparity exists, the second question to consider is suffering. and the reader thinks you are going to talk about the inequality between the French and the colonized sufferings, which you tackle only later on however. I feel that by revising that introduction you can bring a plus in terms of orienting the reader. While reading the road map, and also the essay, one feels more or less a disparity between the main part of your thesis and the subordinate one, that is why did Pontecorvo choose to portray French kindness and suffering at all, although to a lesser extent. Although it is clearly part of your overall argument, as it is standing now it feels a little disjointed from the main body of your essay. You conclude this passage with saying that it softens the impact on the former colonialist societies watching the film, but I feel you could integrate it better by returning somehow to your initial points, so the reader gets a feeling that everything is interrelated. Overall, I enjoyed a lot reading your essay and I want to congratulate you for writing such a strong paper. Best,