Organizing a literary analysis
That compares and/or contrasts works

Writing an analysis that involves comparison of two literary works presents multiple challenges for student writers. Such challenges are best resolved by allowing students opportunities to practice writing a literary essay separately from writing a comparison essay before you assign a literary comparison.

However, even with that separate practice, many students will need some explicit instruction in how to organize the literary comparison essay.

You may wish to examine the writing skeleton™ for a hypothetical literary analysis with a single focus so you have a reference point for comparison.

Working thesis X 2 = comparison

What happens in a literary comparison is this: the writer combines information for a single-focus essay about Work 1 with information for a single-focus essay about Work 2.

For example, a single-focus literary essay could be written on the working thesis that:

Author Urbanite in his novel Leaving City Streets romanticizes country life.

A single-focus literary essay could be also written on the working thesis that:

Author Suburbanite in her novel Escape from the Subdivision romanticizes country life.

To produce a comparison essay, the author combines the two working thesis statements into a single working thesis:

Thesis: Author Urbanite in his novel Leaving City Streets and Author Suburbanite in her novel Escape from the Subdivision each romanticize country life.

Skeleton for literary comparison

Below is a writing skeleton™ for a hypothetical comparison literary analysis that calls for examination of three points of similarity between novels by two different authors:

Note: as with other essays, starting out with between three and five skeleton points:

• gives writers assurance that they have something to say even if one point fizzles

• gives writers flexibility to choose their best material

Writing skeleton™ development

The comparisons need to be developed with roughly the same amount of space for each side of the comparison. Many students find it helpful to use a comparison outline template to give a snapshot of how much material they have for each side of each comparison point.

Having a rough idea of their evidence resources will enable students to make intelligent decisions about what to include in their body paragraphs. It's easy for students to attempt more than they can reasonably squeeze into a given essay length if they haven't planned their comparison in some detail.

In actually writing the essay, writers can choose one of the two standard comparison patterns:

• alternating body paragraphs of discussion of one aspect of work A with a paragraph of discussion of the same aspect of work B

• zig-zaging between discussion of some aspect of both A and B in a single body paragraph

Teaching tip 1: compare applications

Show students explicitly how the literary comparison resembles a nonliterary comparison before you set them on the assignment. If you do not, most students will think writing about literature is a waste of their time.

Not only will such instruction help students understand the writing assignment, but it also helps them understand how skills they learn in writing about literature can be useful in their other classes.

Tip 2: compare single and dual focus

Show students explicitly how a single-focus literary analysis and a comparison literary analysis are similar. This comparison helps take some of the fear out of writing a comparison.

If you use Talk It Out to help your students help each other master strategies for essay writing, do not overlook the chance to have students use them with comparisons on either literary or nonliterary essay topics.