Comparing Texts - Sample answer - version three
Question
Compare how the writers of Text 1 and Text 2 present their perspective and ideas about life as a writer.
Support your answer with a detailed reference to the texts. (14 marks)
Both texts are from a first-person perspective, but while Steinbeck’s text is in the form of a diary, King’s text combines memoir and advice, so also has a direct address to the ‘you’ of the reader.
The structure of Steinbeck’s text is more fragmented, the writer moves around his memories and thoughts, almost like the writing is following a stream of consciousness. This is reflected by the use of single-clause sentences and dashes to link ideas. In contrast King uses time connectives to structure his text: “For years...In 1981…A year or two after…” This underlines the purpose of the text, to show the changes in his approach to writing.
The desk is a common element in both texts, but in King’s it is much more important. He talks about the ‘massive oak slab’ he ‘dreamed of’ for years; the use of the hyperbolic adjective ‘massive’ reflects the physical dominance of the desk and its dominance in King’s idea of a writer’s life. This physical dominance is emphasised by the later metaphor of the ‘T.Rex desk’ – the image of the predatory dinosaur has connotations both of ridiculousness, but also of danger. In contrast, the extract from Steinbeck’s diary has a simple ‘drafting table’, and the chair seems to be more important – the ‘fantastic chair’. The use of the verb ‘drafting’ puts a focus on the physical act of writing.
Steinbeck notes the paradox of having everything you need to write (with the alliteration of the ‘perfect pointed pencil’) but ‘no writing’. A similar contrast arises in Text 2, when King mentions having the perfect desk, yet being on ‘a voyage to nowhere’. This journey metaphor emphasises the lack of focused writing at this point in his career.
The comfort which Steinbeck enjoys is down to the care of his wife, who takes care of the ‘outside details’. King does not want to be detached from life, instead on insisting that his desk must be ‘in the corner’, not ‘in the middle of the room’: he prefers to have his family around him.
He sums this up in the final metaphor of the extract from his memoir: that art is the ‘support-system’ for life, not the other way around. Steinbeck, however, seems to require his ‘beloved’ to be a support-system for his writing. The contrast may also be reflected in the tone of the two texts: Text 1 is quite elevated in its tone and vocabulary (‘a most treacherous animal full of his treasured contradictions’) but King writes in a deliberately down to earth way of the ‘job’ of writing.
Feedback - even better
This answer:
moves smoothly from one text to another throughout
considers the attitudes of the writers, the language and the structure
shows both the similarities and the differences of the text, and links them together
uses plenty of quotations, which are embedded into sentences
includes points about the text that are developed and linked to other points
