Any topic (writer’s choice)

ASSIGNMENT:  COMPARISON ESSAY

Sometimes one work of literature can help us understand more about what another work of literature is saying.  Choose ONE of the pairs below and explore a story in-depth by using a poem or another story to help clarify it.  Please, be sure to quote from both works. 

Essay Length: 3-5 pages

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12 point Font

1. How does dark psychology and the mental traps we create for ourselves unite in Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” (p. 115) and “The Raven” (p.  621)

2. What are the difference between the marginalized women in Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” (p. 287) and Adrienne Rich’s “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” (p. 465)?

3. Pressure and Resistance in Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” (p. 122) and Adrienne Rich’s “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers.”

4.  How does the way Denise Duhamel looks at society in “Humanity 101” (pg. 444) help us to better understand the story of Miss Emily in William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” (p. 308)?

5.  How does Seamus Heaney’s poem “Blackberry Picking” (Blackberry.docx  download) help to explain the ironic turn of events for Sammy in John Updike’s “A & P”?

6.  How does the way Denise Duhamel looks at society in “Humanity 101” (pg. 444) help us to better understand the story of the Grandmother in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard Man to Find” (p. 356)?

7.  How does the story “The Elephant in the Village of the Blind” (p. 17) help to explain Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” (p. 362)? 

8.  How does the poem “Sympathy” (468) by Paul Lawrence Dunbar help to explain the theme of Edwidge Danticat’s “Wall of Fire Rising” (267)?

9.  How may one find grace in difficult circumstances in James Baldwin’s “Sonny Blues” and Martin Espada’s “On the Threads that Connect the Stars”?