Hatin' on Sontag

I decided to do a breakdown of the last persuasive essay in our packet on Susan Sontag's "On Photography" since we did not go over it in class (also I rated the 4 and 7 synthesis essays as 8 and 9 so clearly I need some work on that). The writer of this essay will be referred to as a man named Sue. Firstly, Sue begins his essay with a direct answer to the prompt instead of a hook. It looks more like a thesis, but the real thesis ends the intro. Following the intro, he quotes Sontag and consequently labels her as "dense" (Sue). This statement is supported very well by an analogy of photography to literature (photography : interpretation :: literature : comprehension) that asserts Sontag is missing the interpretation part. Sue's examples of the pictures of the church firebombing, children's suffering, and WWII's end all could serve to refute Sontag's assertion that photographic knowledge will "never be ethical or political knowledge" (Sontag). The only issue is that Sue never directly states his refutation of that lapse in Sontag's assertion; rather he focuses on the feelings side of it that Sontag actually did address. And, although Sue has a great point of photos revealing a finite boundary of the past and present, he only mentions it and follows up with a cliche (not used ironically). So overall I will give it, with much trepidation, a 7.

In any comments, please hazard a guess at the score yourself.