A comparative essay compares the two subjects and shows their similarities and differences. The subjects might have some close relation or may be very different.
However, make sure that you write the subject in the same order. This method is best for lengthy essays and complicated subjects.
- How do education and employment compare?
- Living in a big city or staying in a village.
- The school principal or college dean.
- New Year vs. Christmas celebration.
- Dried Fruit vs. Fresh. Which is better?
- Similarities between philosophy and religion.
- British colonization and Spanish colonization.
- Nuclear power for peace or war?
- Bacteria or viruses.
- Fast food vs. homemade food.
A comparative essay is also known as compare and contrast essay or comparison essay. It analyzes two subjects by either comparing them, contrasting them or both. The Venn diagram is the best tool for writing a paper about the comparison between two subjects.
Table of Contents
Create a list of similarities and differences between two subjects that you want to include in the essay. Moreover, this list helps you decide the basis of your comparison by constructing your initial plan. Evaluate the list and establish your argument and thesis statement.
Here, we have gathered some steps that you should follow to start a well-written comparative essay.
Before starting, you have to analyze the question or essay prompt carefully. Sometimes, you have a great idea in your mind, but it does not match the prompt. Therefore, look over the prompt and create a list of the key phrases. Also, check whether any limits are placed on your topic.
A comparison essay invariably includes two events, or facts, or phenomena, and so forth, which are compared to each other. The main goal of this type of essay is to show the mutual connections between both things, demonstrate their similarities and differences. Moreover, analysis is such a method which requires a “dissection”, or putting stress on the details. Thus, in your comparative analysis essay you have to list and define a few main features of the given facts/events/phenomena. This essay should point to a certain conclusion, so it must have a thesis.
Both things that you are to analyze should be comparable, which means, be of equal logical order. Hence, you cannot compare a laptop with an airplane, but rather a laptop with a book (as regards of the information that you can gain through both), or a laptop with the human brain (as regards of their abilities to process information). We advise you to pick up a couple of things which are easily recognizable as interconnected, or they can be easily compared to each other.
The thesis of your essay can be exposed in the introduction, after a short explanation notice on the context of your analysis. All the details you explore during carrying out the analysis should be directly related to the thesis. They function as arguments. Thus, you will demonstrate that the brain operates better with information, and that a CPU can never replace the brain, but it can be very useful and assist us in faster procession of information, as well as its preservation.
Writing a comparative analysis essay has its special characteristics. It should be clear that this type of essay is different from the contrast essay. The latter involves contrasting two things in order to show their differences.
How to write a comparative analysis essay – essential tips
Remember: don’t just list the main features, but rather try to explain them. What is the function of memory in both cases? What are the similarities and differences between both types of memory? Define, describe and elucidate all main points!
Choose three basic features of the entities you are analyzing, and compare them one by one. For instance, the memory of the laptop’s CPU can be compared with the memory of human beings
Your thesis should be clear and easy for justification. For example, it may contain an assertion that the brain deals with information better than a laptop’s CPU. Thus, each of the points of comparison has to be related to this thesis, and not contradict it.
From there, we go onto a fairly stunted form of metrical analysis
You can get a lot from a poem through examining the rhyme in detail.
“Metrically, ‘My Last Duchess’ appears to be in tetrameter with the odd substitution, “I call” and this, again, might be taken to suggest the narrator’s level of control over his circumstances
“The rhyme scheme in ‘My Last Duchess’ is in perfect couplets while that in ‘Remains’ is the epitome of deliberate irregularity. If one is to take this as a symbolic suggestion of the degree of order in both dramatic and moral worlds, one might conclude that the world of the former poem is ordered and correct, whereas that of the latter is chaotic and incongruent. There is an irony in the Duke speaking in perfect rhyme, being able to rhyme “munificence” and “pretence” and then suggesting he has no “Skill in speech”. This suggests him to be the liar he is. But the more interesting approach is in ‘Remains’: three out of four of the end words in stanza one, in which the looters raid the bank, are repeated in stanza six, when the incident is replayed in the narrator’s memory. The fact that only three of the four words -“out”, “bank”, “not” – are repeated suggests the decay of memory. Internal rhyme also plays a part in the pivot between action turning into memory: the fourth stanza features eye rhymes ”agony”, “by”, “body” before going into near perfect rhyme that carries on into the next stanza, “lorry”, “really”. But “really” is an add on, a coda to the phrase “End of story” suggesting that the death of the looter should have been the finish of the event, but that there is an unpleasant coda and this is the fact that memory ‘remains’.”
Structure – rhyme
It also ignores the fact that the biographical takes you away from the textual, and that since the value in poetry analysis is the study of how words and form align to construct beauty or its antithesis, mention of context inevitably takes you into the realms of history – and this is a whole other subject.
On comparing theme, they should make explicit reference to the word ‘subtextual’ to flag to the examiner that this is an answer rich in apposite use of subject terminology quite early on. For example:
It asks students to do this, however, in very little time
We do not go over the top with metrical analysis: just one comparison is enough to let the examiner know we are on top of the brief.
Besides, both the two political belief systems subjected to government intercession. In capitalism, paying little heed to the way that government mediation has constrained. The state must think of certain principles and guidelines planned for controlling practices, for example, abuse and monopolistic endeavors. On the other, the socialism framework is principally under the government. And the government entrusted to guarantee that all the components of creation have distributed effectively.
For example, a strong comparative essay on transformation versus reformism couldn’t just help you comprehend what every one of these things involves. It can likewise help you make sense of whether you would prefer to be a progressive or a reformist. In like manner, if you just have the opportunity to marathon watch one show. At that point, a comparative essay could help you make sense of whether you would want to go with Game of Thrones or Westworld.
This progression includes identifying what will feature in your essay. It includes identifying the similitudes and differences of the things in comparison. You have to build up a list of approaches by which the topics are the equivalent and how they are different. This list will empower you to build up the underlying arrangement of the essay.
- Produces a very much dissected and incorporated paper
- When to utilize this technique
- Situations where point by point comparison is required
- At the point when the points of comparison are not related
Best practices/tips
Gives more insights regarding the thing in comparison making it simple to deal with two different topics
Another case might be to analyze any two political philosophies. This is a general question and you need to make sense of the different political philosophies. At that point, identify any two that you can look at. Such occasions require the creator to build up the premise of comparison without anyone else.
In any case, you ought to be quick to guarantee that the order of the initial segment is carefully followed.
By building up a comparative essay on any of these sets. You cannot just see everything of under comparison is an increasingly intensive way. You can likewise draw nearer to making sense of which thing you like.
“‘My Last Duchess’ is from Browning’s collection of ‘Dramatic Monologues’ and is a substantial block of text with one person, the Duke, speaking
“The rhyme scheme in ‘My Last Duchess’ is in perfect couplets while that in ‘Remains’ is the epitome of deliberate irregularity. If one is to take this as a symbolic suggestion of the degree of order in both dramatic and moral worlds, one might conclude that the world of the former poem is ordered and correct, whereas that of the latter is chaotic and incongruent. There is an irony in the Duke speaking in perfect rhyme, being able to rhyme “munificence” and “pretence” and then suggesting he has no “Skill in speech”. This suggests him to be the liar he is. But the more interesting approach is in ‘Remains’: three out of four of the end words in stanza one, in which the looters raid the bank, are repeated in stanza six, when the incident is replayed in the narrator’s memory. The fact that only three of the four words -“out”, “bank”, “not” – are repeated suggests the decay of memory. Internal rhyme also plays a part in the pivot between action turning into memory: the fourth stanza features eye rhymes ”agony”, “by”, “body” before going into near perfect rhyme that carries on into the next stanza, “lorry”, “really”. But “really” is an add on, a coda to the phrase “End of story” suggesting that the death of the looter should have been the finish of the event, but that there is an unpleasant coda and this is the fact that memory ‘remains’.”
What the GCSE mark schemes will eventually ask for is a well constructed, conceptual response replete with oodles of subject terminology and a fairly deep mention of context.
Writing a comparative essay about two poems, seen or unseen, is what students will eventually be assessed on when they come to sit the poetry analysis part of their GCSE Literature in essay.
Context – theme
So, my recommendation to students when constructing the first paragraph of an essay comparing two poems is, if appropriate, to make glancing reference to the titles – but only so far as they link to comparison of theme. The contextual is in the thematic.
“The subtextual theme of ‘My Last Duchess’ is that sexual jealousy can cause the empowered (in this case titled) men – or, indeed, just men – to so lose their minds that they become murderous, whereas the subtextual theme of ‘Remains’ links to the ambiguities of the title: that, as a noun, it links to the idea of the human remains of the looter around which the narrative revolves and that, as a verb, all that is left is memory. Both these poems linger around ideas of memory, and both narrators are tortured. But whereas the narrator in ‘Remains’ realises that he is stained by his actions, the narrator of ‘My Last Duchess’ is oblivious and has learned altogether nothing.”
This is as far as we might want to go with context. Otherwise, we are addressing the poetic with its opposite and scribing a list of dates. So, the next paragraph should examine structure. We do so by using rhyme scheme and form as a way of unlocking it. First of all, say what you see and, where possible, state the form: