Comparative Essays

For most A Level English specifications, your NEA will be a comparative essay. Whilst most of the articles in this series of Essay Tips will still apply to comparative essays, there are some specific things to consider.

Selecting the right texts

The most important decision you need to make is selecting the texts you will be using – for most of you that will be two texts. Your teacher should be able to offer some suggestions, but you may have ideas that reflect your own interests. When teaching this unit as a teacher, I always taught one of the texts to ensure that at least one book was a suitably challenging text for A Level study and then gave the students a long list of texts which would pair well with it; most were happy to choose one from this list, but some had very firm ideas about alternatives which generated some extremely interesting essays.

As a word of caution, whilst modern literary fiction can be suitable to compare to a range of texts from the literary canon, do make sure there is enough in the text to make analysis and comparison possible – just because you love a book, it doesn’t mean it’s suitable for an A Level essay. If you need to include critical readings, this can be difficult to find for very modern texts and so will make your task far harder. You also need to consider what your Higher Education plans are – if you are applying to study English at university or are applying to a top university, choosing the latest Alice Feeney novel is not likely to make you look like a serious academic! Also, avoid choosing a text which is studied at GCSE or which you read as a child – it needs to be an A Level standard text.

The most important factor in your choice should be enjoyment – you are going to be reading and writing about these texts for several months so don’t choose something that sends you to sleep every time you pick it up!

Developing your title

Having made your selection of texts, check that there is a substantial topic which links them; it needs to be broad enough to allow considerable overlapping of the texts but not too close that there are no differences. A thematic link is better than focusing on small elements like technique. The best comparative essays find what seem like clear similarities but become subtle differences and vice versa.

Then, you need to come up with a suitable question. I suggest considering these things:

• think of an argument linking to your topic
• Give your question a wide focus to start off with in case you run out of things to say; you can usually alter it a little if you have too much to say.
• Use key words which will make you focus on the assessment objective. e.g.
  • Use the word ‘how’ so that you focus on AO2
  • Use a phrase like ‘the contexts of the texts’ production’ to foreground AO3
  • Use the word ‘compare’ to foreground AO4
  • Use a phrase like ‘different critical perspectives’ to foreground AO5

A suitable title, therefore, might be Considering different critical perspectives and the contexts of the texts’ production, compare how the conflict between public and private is presented in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Planning and Structuring

As with any essay, you now need to focus on finding the evidence of the connections between the texts by reading both texts carefully, making plenty of notes and mind mapping your ideas. (See article on Mapping and Planning your NEA)

Once you have all of your ideas, think carefully about the best way to structure your essay.

How to introduce it

• Establish the context within which you chose the two texts; this is likely to be a theme, question, problem, idea or theory
• Make clear your grounds for comparison – let your reader know why your choice is deliberate and meaningful, not random.
• Give a very brief introduction to each text but only summarise the aspect of the text which links to your question.
• Include a brief reference to when the texts were written and their respective genres.
• State your thesis – you need to make the relationship between A and B clear in your thesis using a connective like whereas.

As you write

Keep in mind that a connective approach to comparison is more likely to get you a high grade. So, throughout your essay, ensure this connectivity by moving back and forth between your texts using phrases like similarly, likewise, on the contrary, conversely, on the other hand, in contrast.

It is good practice to deal with the essays in chronological order so always write about the one that was written earliest first.