Comparison and Contrast

Introduction

Comparison/Contrast is instinctive. It's how we make sense of our world.

This eBook will help you understand how to tackle a comparison/contrast essay, including brainstorming, organization, and thesis.

Why do we compare/contrast?
One of the most common types of essays you will write is the comparison/contrast essay, in which you focus on the ways in which certain things or ideas—usually two of them—are similar to (comparison) and/or different from (contrast) one another. Your instructors assign these types of essays because they encourage students to move beyond summary or description and into analysis, which is the goal of collegiate education.

From an early age, one of the ways we make sense of our world is through comparison and contrast. In college, when we reflect on similarities and differences, we gain a deeper understanding of the items we are comparing, their relationship to each other, and what is most important about them.

Recognizing comparison/contrast in assignments
Some assignments use words--like compare, contrast, similarities, and differences--that make it easy for you to see that they are asking you to compare and/or contrast. In some cases, though, it may not be so easy to determine whether an essay is asking you to include comparison and/or contrast.

Sometimes comparison/contrast is only part of the essay—you begin by comparing and/or contrasting two or more things and then use what you’ve learned to construct an argument, proposal, or evaluation. Furthermore, some topics ask only for comparison, others only for contrast, and others for both. You will need to carefully analyze what the assignment is asking you to do. Look at the action words.

Determine if comparison/contrast is part of the assignment, the entire assignment, or not necessary at all. There is some information that may help with this in our handout on Understanding Assignments.

Using comparison/contrast for pre-writing
Sometimes you may want to use comparison and/or contrast techniques in your own pre-writing work to get ideas that you can later use for an argument, even if comparison or contrast isn’t an official requirement for the paper you’re writing and the lists of similarities and differences you generate may not appear anywhere in the final draft of your paper.

Pizza Perfect

Gondola House

*Downtown Nashville
*Delivery
*Long wait

*Pizza and Pasta
*Same price
*Comfortable seating

*Hermitage
*No delivery
*No wait

How do I compare?
Making a Venn diagram or chart can help you quickly and efficiently compare and contrast two or more things or ideas.

To make a Venn diagram, simply draw some overlapping circles, one circle for each item you’re considering. In the central area where they overlap, list the traits the two items have in common. In the areas that do not overlap you can list the traits that make the things different. To the left is a very simple example, using two pizza places:

To make a chart, figure out what criteria you want to focus on in comparing the items. Along the left side of the page, list each of the criteria. Across the top, list the names of the items. You should then have a box per item for each criterion; you can fill the boxes in and then survey what you’ve discovered. Here’s an example, this time using three pizza places:

What should I include?
As you generate points of comparison, consider the purpose and content of the assignment and the focus of the class. What do you think the professor wants you to learn by doing this comparison/contrast? How does it fit with what you have been studying so far and with the other assignments in the course? Are there any clues about what to focus on in the assignment itself?

Examples

The following pages contain some general questions about different types of things you might have to compare. These are by no means complete or definitive lists; they’re just here to give you some ideas—you can generate your own questions for these and other types of comparison.

You may want to begin by using the questions reporters traditionally ask: Who? What? Where? When? Why? How?

If you’re talking about objects, you might also consider general properties like size, shape, color, sound, weight, taste, texture, smell, number, duration, and location.

Two ideas or theories

Two pieces of writing or art

Two historical periods or events

Two people

1. When did they occur? Do you know the date(s) and duration? What happened or changed during each? Why are they significant?

2. What kinds of work did people do? What kinds of relationships did they have? What did they value?

3. What kinds of governments were there? Who were important people involved?

4. What caused events in these periods, and what consequences did they have later on?

1. What are they about?

2 Did they originate at a particular time?

3. Who created them? Who uses or defends them?

4. What is the central focus, claim, or goal of each? What conclusions do they offer?

5. How are they applied to situations/people/things
/etc.?

6. Which seems more plausible to you and why? How broad is their scope?

7. What kind of evidence is usually offered for them?

1. What are their titles? What do they describe or depict?

2. What is their tone or mood? What is their form?

3. Who created them? When were they created? Why do you think they were created as they were? What themes do they address?

4. Do you think one is of higher quality or greater merit than the other (s)? Why?

5. For writing: what plot, characterization, setting, theme, tone, and type of narration are used?

1. Where are they from? How old are they? What is the gender, race, class, etc. of each?

2. What, if anything, are they known for? Do they have any relationship to each other?

3. What are they like? What did/do they do? What do they believe? Why are they interesting?

4. What stands out most about each of them?

What should I focus on?
By now you have probably generated a huge list of similarities and differences—congratulations! Next you must decide which of them are interesting, important, and relevant enough to be included in your paper. Ask yourself these questions:

·  What’s relevant to the assignment?
·  What’s relevant to the course?
·  What’s interesting and informative?
·  What matters to the argument you are going to
make?
·  What’s basic or central (and needs to be
mentioned even if obvious)?
·  Overall, what’s more important—the similarities
or the differences?

Suppose that you are writing a paper comparing two novels. For most literature classes, the fact that they both use Caslon type (a kind of typeface, like the fonts you may use in your writing) is not going to be relevant, nor is the fact that one of them has a few illustrations and the other has none; literature classes are more likely to focus on subjects like characterization, plot, setting, the writer’s style and intentions, language, central themes, and so forth. However, if you were writing a paper for a class on typesetting or on how illustrations are used to enhance novels, the typeface and presence or absence of illustrations might be absolutely critical to include in your final paper.

THESIS

What should a comparison/contrast thesis look like?
The thesis of your comparison/contrast paper is important: it can help you create a focused argument and give your reader a road map so she/he doesn’t get lost in the sea of points you are about to make.

As in any paper, you will want to replace vague reports of your general topic (for example, “This paper will compare and contrast two pizza places,” or “Pizza Perfect and Gondola House are similar in some ways and different in others,” or “Pizza Perfect and Gondola House are similar in many ways, but they have one major difference”) with something more detailed and specific.

For example, you might say, “Pizza Perfect and Gondola House have similar prices and ingredients, but their atmospheres and willingness to deliver set them apart.”

Be careful, though—although this thesis is fairly specific and does propose a simple argument (that atmosphere and delivery make the two pizza places different), your instructor will often be looking for a bit more analysis. In this case, the obvious question is “So what? Why should anyone care that Pizza Perfect and Gondola House are different in this way?” One might also wonder why the writer chose those two particular pizza places to compare—why not Papa John’s, Dominos, or Pizza Hut?

Again, thinking about the context the class provides may help you answer such questions and make a stronger argument. Here’s a revision of the thesis mentioned earlier:

Pizza Perfect and Gondola House both offer a greater variety of ingredients than other Nashville area pizza places, but the funky, lively atmosphere at Pizza Perfect makes it a better place to give visiting friends and family a taste of local culture.

You may find our handout on writing a thesis statement useful at this stage.

College professors are looking for analysis. Your paper should answer the "so what?" question.

ORGANIZATION

There are two main ways to organize a
comparison and/or contrast essay.

Subject-by-subject
Begin by saying everything you have to say about the first subject you are discussing, then move on and make all the points you want to make about the second subject (and after that, the third, and so on, if you’re comparing/contrasting more than two things). If the paper is short, you might be able to fit all of your points about each item into a single paragraph, but it’s more likely that you’d have several paragraphs per item.

Using our pizza place comparison/contrast as an example, after the introduction, you might have a paragraph about the ingredients available at Pizza Perfect, a paragraph about its location, and a paragraph about its ambiance. Then you’d have three similar paragraphs about Gondola House, followed by your conclusion.

The danger of this subject-by-subject organization is that your paper will simply be a list of points: a certain number of points (in my example, three) about one subject, then a certain number of points about another. This is usually not what college instructors are looking for in a paper—generally they want you to compare or contrast two or more things very directly, rather than just listing the traits the things have and leaving it up to the reader to reflect on how those traits are similar or different and why

those similarities or differences matter. Thus, if you use the subject-by-subject form, you will probably want to have a very strong, analytical thesis and at least one body paragraph that ties all of your different points together.

A subject-by-subject structure can be a logical choice if you are writing what is sometimes called a “lens” comparison, in which you use one subject or item (which isn’t really your main topic) to better understand another item (which is).

For example, you might be asked to compare a poem you’ve already covered thoroughly in class with one you are reading on your own. It might make sense to give a brief summary of your main ideas about the first poem (this would be your first subject, the “lens”), and then spend most of your paper discussing how those points are similar to or different from your ideas about the second.

Twain
vs.
Tennyson