Purpose

The first thing to remember in a comparison/contrast essay is that there must be a significant reason for comparing or contrasting the items in your paper. In the comparison/contrast paper, the significance, importance, relevance, or value of the essay lies in the reason for doing the comparison/contrast, and this is where the thesis will focus attention. If you are writing a comparison/contrast essay, there must be a clear reason for comparing or contrasting the items in the essay.

Secondly, the comparison or contrast must make sense. You can't compare two items which are identical. This means that there is always some contrast between the items under discussion in a comparison essay. Also, if you are going to contrast items, there must be some basis for comparison between the items; otherwise, the contrast is simplistic, obvious, and useless.

Approaches

There are basically four approaches to comparison/contrast: Valuation, Interpretation, Analysis, and Synthesis.

Valuation

This is probably the simplest approach to comparison/contrast. In this approach, two or more options are compared to/contrasted with each other for the purpose of determining the more valuable of the two. Examples could include comparing local shopping marts, comparing two equivalent models of cars by different manufacturers, contrasting two or more approaches to some topic like supervision or parenting. In these essays, the focus is usually on which option is better.

Interpretation

In this approach, one item is used to explain another item by comparing the similarities or contrasting the differences between the two. One item is the known, the item which the writer can reasonably assume the reader is familiar with. The other item is the unknown, the thing which the writer is attempting to interpret or explain. Examples could include comparing/contrasting ping pong to tennis (using ping pong to explain tennis), football to rugby, or checkers to chess. Sometimes interpretive comparison/contrast essays use analogies. For instance, the following analogy has been used to explain why "solid" objects which are made up of atoms which are mostly "open space" still appear to be solid. Imagine someone swinging a bucket of water at the end of a thirty foot rope. If this person swings the bucket fast enough, it will blur like the prop of a plane so that a watcher couldn't see where the bucket actually was in its circuit of the body of the person swingint the bucket. If the person watching tried to run toward the person swinging the bucket, the person running would have to run very, very fast to keep from being hit by the bucket. The swinging bucket would "feel" like a "solid wall." Scientists often use analogies to explain topics which could otherwise only be understood in terms of complex mathematics. The focus in comparison/contrast essays following this approach is to use the familiar to explain the unfamiliar.

Analysis

In an analysis comparison/contrast essay, two or more items are broken down into their parts in order to understand each in relation to the other. Analysis essays tend to be very detailed. The focus in these essays is on understanding each item being compared or contrasted and on understanding their relationship to each other.

Synthesis

In the synthesis essay, two items are compared/contrasted and then related to something larger than the items. This is probably the most sophisticated kind of comparison/contrast. Suppose someone wrote an essay comparing/contrasting the original Star Trek series to Star Trek: Next Generation. In these two shows, personal relationships are very different. In the original series, men formed "boys clubs," closeknit social relationships founded on deep loyalties and comraderie (Spock, McCoy, Kirk was one club, Scotty, Sulu, Checkov another). Women were kept in roles subservient to men and relationships between men and women were primarily romantic/erotic. In the Next Generation, relationships maintain "distance" based on issues of hierarchy or personal privacy. Picard's relationship with his men is that of a distant but benevolent father, his relationship with women, romantic with reservations. None of the crew form loyalties with each other as deep as those in the original series. Women are seen in more equal roles with men, and romantic relationships have a carefully choreographed formalism. In a synthesis comparison/contrast essay, this analysis of relationships might be used as a way of discussing the social mores of the times in which the shows were written, the 1960's and the 1980's. A synthesis essay expands the discussion beyond the topics considered to broader social, cultural, philosophic, or other systems. For instance, a previous composition textbook included an essay by Bruce Catton which compared the generalships of Lee and Grant. Part of the essay focused on how each man was a reflection of his culture--Lee, the aristocrat, and Grant, the self-made man, and how each reflected the forces at work in America at the time--the old landed gentry and the rising industrial class. This discussion of the ways in which the men revealed their cultures is an example of synthesis at work. These essays focus on the relationships between the things being compared and the larger context into which they fit.

Organization

There are two basic approaches to organizing the body of a comparison/contrast essay: the block approach and the point-by-point approach.

In the block approach, the first item is described in its entirety, then the second item is described in its entirety. The points of comparison/contrast are kept parallel to each other. The pattern is A1, A2, A3 B1, B2, B3

where A and B are the items being compared or contrasted and 1, 2, and 3 are the points of comparison or contrast. It is important to keep the points of comparison/contrast in the same order throughout the essay. Block comparison works best when the comparison/contrast is fairly simple or when the items being compared are both fairly well known to the reader.

In the point-by-point approach, each point of comparison or contrast is discussed first with one item then with the other time being compared/contrasted. The pattern is A1, B1 A2, B2 A3, B3

where A and B are the items being compared or contrasted and 1, 2, and 3 are the points of comparison or contrast. It is important to keep the items in the same order throughout the essay. Point-by-point comparison/contrast works best when the comparison/contrast is fairly complex or when at least one of the items is not well known to readers.