Writing a Comparison and Contrast Essay
Begin your paper with a clear statement of thesis, and the rest should be easy. What do you hope to demonstrate in your paper? A simple formula for the thesis will suffice. For example, “In this paper I plan to compare and contrast Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’ on the basis of the theme of community response to a threat.” Or, “I plan to compare and contrast Shirley Jackson’s ‘The Lottery’ and Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’ on the bases of plot, setting, and theme in order to demonstrate the inadequacy of community response to a threat.” You may fine-tune your thesis later.
To write a comparison and contrast essay, first decide what the similarities or differences are by writing them down in a list. Which are more significaant, the similarities or the differences? If the differences far outweigh the similarities then you may want to reconsider the stories you have chosen for your essay. Finally, in organizing your essay, choose one of the strategies described below, whichever best fits your thesis.
Plan A: Use Plan A if you want to discuss each literary work (or subject) in turn. After your introduction, discuss the first work according to a number of points (such as a series of the literary elements or a series of points suggested by only one element such as theme or character) in a sequence of points and then go on in the second half of the essay to say everything about the second work, comparing each item in the second with the same item in the first. For example, you might wish to demonstrate that two works may be compared on the basis of several literary elements, such as plot, setting, and theme. Or you may decide to base your comparison on an in- depth look at only one of the elements; for example, you might examine two characters from two stories in relation to a number of similar traits, such as background, character, and personality. This format is known as the block or subject-by-subject method.
Plan B: Plan B is the inverse of Plan A. Use Plan B if you want to discuss two literary works in terms of a series of points. After your introduction, in the first body paragraph (or sequence of paragraphs) discuss one point of comparison in terms of BOTH works or characters, and then move on to discuss the second point in the next paragraph or section in terms of both, then the third, and so forth, until you’re done. This method is known as the alternating or point-by-point method.
Your focus may be on differences or similarities or both.
For another approach, consult http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Compare-and-Contrast-Essay
You may also refer to Simon and Shuster, pp. 91-92, for additional comments on organizing the comparison-contrast paragraph.
The following is an example of a comparison and contrast essay on two poems organized point-by-point (remember that your text needs to be 4-5 pages, without the works cited):
Ima A. Student
ENGL 103d
Dr. Alan F. Hickman
Paper I, Poetry (for demonstration purposes only)
14 Feb. 2018
A Comparative Analysis of Amy Lowell’s “Patterns”
and Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth”
Amy Lowell’s “Patterns” and Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth” are two powerful and unique condemnations of war. Owen’s short poem speaks broadly and generally about the ugliness of war as it directly affects both combatants and those at home whom it leaves bereaved, while Lowell’s longer poem focuses upon the personal account of a young woman who has lost her fiancé “in action.” The anti-war themes may be compared on the basis of content and style: their subjects, their lengths, their concreteness, and their use of a common major metaphor.
“Anthem for Doomed Youth” attacks the subject of war more directly than “Patterns.” Owen’s opening lines, “What passing bells for those who die as cattle? / Only the monstrous anger of the guns” (1-2), suggest that in war human beings are depersonalized before they are slaughtered, like so much meat, while his observations about the “monstrous” guns and the “shrill, demented” shells unambiguously condemn the horrors of war. By contrast, in “Patterns,” warfare is far away, on another continent, intruding only when the messenger delivers the letter stating that the speaker’s fiancé has been killed:
Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday Sen’ night.” (lines 59-64)Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday sen’night.”
Similar news governs the last six lines of Owen’s poem, quietly describing the responses of those at home to the news that their loved ones have died in war. Thus, the anti-war focus in “Patterns” is the contrast between the calm, peaceful life of the speaker’s garden and the anguish of her responses, while in Owen’s poem the stress is more the external horrors of war which bring about the need for ceremonies honoring the dead. Both poems attack war, but they do so in different ways.
Another difference, which is perhaps something of a surprise, is that Owen’s poem is less than one seventh as long as Lowell’s. “Patterns” is an interior monologue or meditation of 107 lines, but it could not realistically be shorter. In the poem, the speaker thinks about the present and past, and contemplates the future loneliness to which her intended husband’s death has doomed her. Her final outburst—“Christ, what are patterns for?”—makes no sense if she does not explain her situation as extensively as she does. Indeed, as Rafeeq O. McGiveron states, “the last stanza’s rhymes, complementing its shorter and tighter line lengths, help reflect the idea of patterns closing in on the poem’s speaker” (142). On the other hand, “Anthem for Doomed Youth” is brief (a fourteen-line sonnet) because it is more general and less personal than “Patterns.” Although Owen’s speaker shows sympathy for individuals, he or she views the sorrows of others distantly, unlike Lowell, who goes right into the mind and spirit of the grieving woman. Owen’s use, in his last six lines, of phrases like “tenderness of patient minds” and “drawing down of blinds,” is a short but powerful representation of deep grief. He presents no further detail even though thousands of individual stories might be told. Lowell, on the other hand, tells one of these stories as she focuses on her solitary speaker’s lost hopes and dreams. Thus, the contrasting lengths of the poems are governed by each poet’s treatment of the topic and is reflected in each poet’s choice of form.
Despite these differences of approach and length, both poems are similarly concrete and vivid. Owen moves from the real scenes and sounds of battlefields to the homes of the many doomed soldiers who are now dead, while Lowell’s scene is a single place—the garden of the estate where the speaker has just received news of her lover’s death. Her speaker walks on gravel along garden paths that contain daffodils, squills, a fountain, and a lime tree. She thinks of her clothing and her ribbonned shoes, and also of her fiancé’s boots, sword hilts, and buttons. The images of Owen’s poem are equally real, but are associated, not with any individuals so much as with generalities: cattle, boys and girls, the reality of life. Indeed, generalities are the stock in trade of anthems: “Anthems are for martyrs and heroes, and such are Owen’s doomed youth—despite his claim that his poetry ‘is not about heroes’” (Brophy 23). Owen’s details are general, public, and comprehensive, whereas Lowell’s are centralized, personal, and intimate.
Along with this concreteness, the poems share a major metaphor: that cultural patterns both control and frustrate human wishes, plans, and hopes. In “Patterns” this metaphor is shown in warfare itself (line 106), which is the supremely destructive political structure, or pattern. Further examples of the metaphor are found in details about clothing (particularly the speaker’s stiff, confining gown in lines 5, 18, 21, 73, and 100, but also the lover’s military boots in lines 46 and 49); the orderly, formal garden paths in which the speaker is walking (lines 1, 93); her restraint at hearing of her lover’s death; and her courtesy, despite her grief, in ordering that the messenger take refreshment (line 69). Within such rigid patterns, the hopes for happiness of “this melancholy poem’s hopeless speaker” (McGiveron 144) have vanished, along with the sensuous spontaneity represented by her lover’s plans to make love with her on a “shady seat” in the garden (Lowell, “Patterns” lines 85-89). The metaphor of the constricting pattern may also be seen in “Anthem for Doomed Youth,” except that in this poem the pattern is embodied in the funeral, not love or marriage. Owen’s speaker contrasts the calm, peaceful tolling of “passing bells” (line 1) with the frightening sounds of war represented by the “monstrous anger of the guns,” the “rifles’ rapid rattle,” and “the demented choirs of wailing shells” (lines 2-8). Thus, while Lowell uses the metaphor to reveal the irony of war’s destruction of hope and desire, Owen uses it to reveal the irony of war’s nullification and perversion of peaceful ceremonies:
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires. (lines 5-8)
Each poem ends in a ritual concession to loneliness and despair: in “Patterns,” the speaker is “guarded from embrace” as she walks the “patterned garden paths,” while in “Anthem,” the “girls” left behind by the dead “boys” draw down the blinds at dusk.
“Patterns” and “Anthem for Doomed Youth” are two poems by two very different poets, told from two very different perspectives; both, however, are concerned with the inhumanity of war, and both deplore the patterns of behavior that perpetuate its madness. This theme is borne out in the form and content of the poems.
Works Cited
Brophy, James D. “The War Poetry of Wilfred Owen and Osbert Sitwell: An Instructive Contrast.” Modern Language Studies, vol. 1, no. 2, 1971, pp. 22-29. JSTOR, Accessed 25 Jan. 2017.
Lowell, Amy. “Patterns.” Poemhunter.com, www.poemhunter.com/amy-lowell. Accessed 26 Jan. 2014.
McGiveron, Rafeeq O. “Lowell’s ‘Patterns.’ (Amy Lowell).” The Explicator, no. 3, 1997, pp. 142-144. Literature Resource Center, http://ezproxy.aud.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,url&db=edsglr&AN=edsgcl.20533945&site=eds-live. Accessed 25 Jan. 2017.
Owen, Wilfred. “Anthem for Doomed Youth.” Reading Packet, ENGL 103d, Introduction to Literature, AUD, Ed. Alan Hickman, Fall 2016.
Patterns
I walk down the garden-paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jeweled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden-paths.
My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.
And the plashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.
I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the
buckles on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover.
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he
clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon–
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.
Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the
Duke.
“Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se’nnight.”
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
“Any answer, Madam,” said my footman.
“No,” I told him.
“See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer.”
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.
In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.”
Now he is dead.
In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?
Anthem for Doomed Youth
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
The following slideshow illustrates the difference between a point-by-point and block (subject-by-subject) organizational pattern for comparison/contrast essays:
http://www.slideshare.net/klomanno/comparison-contrast-essay
Knightcite: http://www.calvin.edu/library/knightcite/index.php
The MLA Style Center: https://style.mla.org/works-cited-a-quick-guide/
