A Comparative Essay Plan
Here is a three text comparative plan. I thought I'd posted it already to the blog but could not find it. Anyway here it is again. It's just an example using texts irrelvant to your essay but it will give you an idea of how to write your plan.
Most importantly you should aim to break down the key words / phrases in the title. Jot down definitions or associations linked to the key words and link these to the three texts you are writing on.
The plan below is using a basic essay question. Compare and contrast the different ways horses are presented in the poetry of Hughes, Muir and MacNeice.
Titles/Poets
Sub Themes
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The Horses Louise MacNeice
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Horses Ted Hughes
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The Horses Edwin Muir
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Presentation of the horses
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Performers, obedient, passive, controlled by one woman
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Natural of the earth, elemental, statuesque
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Wild, free,
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Quotations
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Presentation of humans
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Circus performer who controls the horses / explicit woman, implicit brass band
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Isolated, alone, disorientated deeply impressed – moved by the experience of walking passed them
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Vulnerable, weak, dependent, primitive, just surviving
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Quotations
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Relationship between humans and horses
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Trained pets
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Indifference
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Saviours
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Quotations
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“Not one snorted or stamped its feet”
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“Their coming our beginning”
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The setting and horses
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Circus – created by people, bright, colourful, loud
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Dartmoor / predawn and dawn – imagines urban setting in the future
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In the future / Rural setting / after a war that has destroyed most humans
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Quotations
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The narrator and horses
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Observer – detached remote from action
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First person narrator
Observer involved in the action
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First person narrator involved in the action
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Quotations
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