1/ This week you will write your second essay. The pattern will be compare/contr

1/ This week you will write your second essay. The pattern will be compare/contrast. Look at the list of essays that we have thus far. You are tasked with selecting 2 from the reading list, and then glean what is the same about them and what is different. You must not choose anything else but two essays from this list:
“Beauty: When the Other Dancer is the Self” by Alice Walker
“My Two Lives” by Jhumpa Lahiri
“The Death of a Moth” by Virginia Woolf
“The Santa Ana Winds” by Joan Didion
“Dawn and Mary” by Brian Doyle
“He Said, She Said” by Deborah Tannen
“Everything you Need to Know…” by Stephen King
“Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris
“Why Women Smile” by Amy Cunningham
“From Hiroshima Diary” by Michihiko Hachiya
You have many choices when it comes to designing your comparative essay. Think of the other patterns we have explored, and feel free to use them in some of the comparing and contrasting that you will be doing. But you must compare the two. What is similar? What is different?
READ CAREFULLY: How to get started. A useful exercise is to make a column for SAME and a column for DIFFERENT on a piece of paper. Then reread each essay to refresh your memory. Note what is the same about each, and make a list. Then do the same for different. Some elements to consider analyzing include endings, openings, time period in which essay takes place, location, voice of the piece, point of view, tone (humor, sad, serious, assertive, gentle), titles, theme. You can certainly compare writing styles. And you can even compare authors. Is there something about the writers that would make for an interesting comparison? The list is endless. Allow your creative ideas to unleash themselves. Learning how to write a comparative essay is opens your mind in terms of finding obvious but also creative comparisons.
READ CAREFULLY: You must add citations in your essay. For example, if you are comparing the theme of “death” in “The Death of a Moth” and “Dawn and Mary,” it would be beneficial make a claim, and then find a phrase or sentence in each essay that backs up your claim. Academic essays are largely written by making a claim (stating a point), then discussing your thoughts about the claim (your reasoning), and then a citation(s) from your source(s), to back up your claim and thoughts. Remember to create a lead in phrase. A phrase that leads into the citation. Don’t just plop it in.
Example: Death is central to Virginia Woolf’s essay “The Death of a Moth” and Brian Doyle’s essay “Dawn and Mary.” All three: the moth, Dawn and Mary, decease by the end of each essay, and they do so by fighting for life. This is their common ground. The moth is determined to make it outdoors by fluttering against a window until he is utterly exhausted. By contrast, Mary and Dawn of Sandy Hook Elementary School share a different struggle. They risk their lives in an attempt to spare the lives of students. In both cases, the moth and the women are actively engaged at their moment of death. The moth puts up a fight until the very end as shown by the line: “After perhaps a seventh attempt he slipped from the wooden ledge and fell, fluttering his wings, on to his back on the windowsill (Woolf). Brian Doyle describes Dawn and Mary’s last moment by portraying an heroic moment where “they lunged right at the boy with the rifle” (Doyle).