Instructions: This 1500-1750 essay asks you to create a conversation between two texts, Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) and either the ’75 film adaptation or the Netflix series Ratched. You may also choose an artifact from outside the class, but you should let me know so we can decide if your artifact will work. Consider how you build your knowledge about anything by comparing – you refine your definitions, you gain clarity about concepts, you discover new points of view, and you open up new lines of inquiry.
When writing a comparative analysis, you need to keep in mind your frame of reference, your grounds for comparison, and your thesis.
• Frame of Reference: This is the context within which you place the two things you plan to compare and contrast. The frame of reference may consist of an idea, theme, question, problem, or theory (for example: redefining norms of masculinity or the effects of colonialism on tourism).
• Grounds for Comparison: Let’s say you’re writing a paper on global food distribution, and you’ve chosen to compare apples and oranges. Why these particular fruits? Why not pears and bananas? The rationale behind your choice, the grounds of comparison, lets your reader know why your choice is deliberate and meaningful, not random.
• Thesis: The grounds for comparison anticipate the comparative nature of your thesis. As in any argumentative paper, your thesis statement will convey the gist of your argument, which necessarily follows from your frame of reference. But in a compare-and-contrast, the thesis depends on how the two things you’ve chosen to compare actually relate to one another. Do they extend, corroborate, complicate, contradict, correct, or debate one another? Whether your paper focuses primarily on difference or similarity, you need to make the relationship between A (the book) and B (the film) clear in your thesis. Be sure to relate all links between A and B back to the thesis.
This assignment also asks for you to connect your chosen texts to the discourses that can be located within critical analyses of these two texts and arguments related to your thesis argument. Thus, you will be required to format a Works Cited page on a page following your essay’s conclusion that includes three to four citations of academic evidence which supports your claims. Two of these may be journal articles assigned in class this quarter.
Keep in mind you are writing an essay that is analytical and persuasive; you need to take a position and argue a point of view, not merely summarize a text without offering evidence to support your own argument (an original position/opinion) about its meaning or significance. Evidence comes from the text itself. Please remember that grammatical, coherent writing is the minimum requirement for a passing grade; points will be deducted from essays that are incoherent and make significant numbers of grammatical errors.
English 1C: Comparative Analysis