A Three Text Comparative Plan

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	The Horses Louise MacNeice	Horses Ted Hughes	The Horses Edwin Muir
Presentation of the horses	Performers, obedient, passive, controlled by one woman	Natural of the earth, elemental, statuesque	Wild, free,
Quotations
Presentation of humans	Circus performer who controls the horses / explicit woman, implicit brass band	Isolated, alone, disorientated deeply impressed – moved by the experience of walking passed them	Vulnerable, weak, dependent, primitive, just surviving
Quotations
Relationship between humans and horses	Trained pets	Indifference	Saviours
Quotations	“The long whip lingers and leads them inwards”	“Not one snorted or stamped its feet”	“Their coming our beginning”
The setting and horses	Circus – created by people, bright, colourful, loud	Dartmoor / predawn and dawn – imagines urban setting in the future	In the future / Rural setting / after a war that has destroyed most humans
Quotations
The narrator and horses	Observer – detached remote from action	First person narrator Observer  involved in the action	First person narrator involved in the action
Quotations