I am planning for a 1 hour mock exam (tomorrow) about two poems:

Question

-Dulce et Deocorum est (Wilfred Owen)
-The Man He Killed (Thomas Hardy)
My essay question is-
what are the similarities and differenced on the two poems in which shows the theme conflict.

Now I don't need you to read the poems but I do need help on comparing the two poems

can you please give some tips and advice on how to encounter this into a formal essay.

thanks :)

Answer 1

Whenever you are writing a comparison/contrast paper (paragraph, essay, research paper), you need to plan it out very carefully on paper first.

Try this:

1. Write all the information about one of your topics on one page.
2. Write all the information about the other topic on another page.
3. Then put them together in this order:

1. Intro
2. All about topic A
~~~2A. detail 1
~~~2B. detail 2
~~~2C. detail 3
~~~2D. detail 4
~~~2E. detail 5
3. All about topic B
~~~3A. detail 1
~~~3B. detail 2
~~~3C. detail 3
~~~3D. detail 4
~~~3E. detail 5
4. Concl.

The number of details for each topic will vary depending on your main points. I would include comparisons (how they are similar) in the introduction and conclusion, but sections 2 and 3 and all those details will be stating and explaining how they are different.

There are two recognized patterns for writing comparison/contrast papers. One is casually referred to as "zig-zag,” but can be very confusing for the reader if you don’t use transitions effectively. The other is topic-by-topic (which is what I've outlined above) and is much easier for the reader to follow.

See http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/comparcontrast.html for further help with comparison/contrast writing.

Once you have organized your information into an outline, please re-post if you’d like feedback from someone here.

Answer 2

thank you so much
this is so helpful!!!

Answer 3

You're welcome!