Thesis: Can openers are better at opening cans than true love is, but movies about can openers are boring.
Contributed by David Mansfield on 01 October 2006 at 20:33If given the following (appalling) prompt -
Compare and contrast can openers and true love
- how would you approach it? Would you have a section on can openers, followed by a section on true love? Or would you alternate between can openers and true love, noting similiarities and differences as you went? Or, perhaps, would you combine those two strategies to form some unholy chimera of compostional structure?
My aim is to suggest the ideal strategy, although the short form of it is: It depends.
Each approach has its advantages. The first approach - a can openers section and a true love section - has the virtue of intrasectional unity; there is no chance of someone going "Why is he [or she] discussing can openers in this paragraph?" when the entire paragraph is about can openers. (The question "Why is this paper about can openers?" remains valid.) The problem, of course, is one of intersectional coherence; the question "Wasn't he [or she] just talking about true love?" can easily arise, which is no good.
The ideal time to use that approach is when the comparison focuses on one aspect of the items to be compared. For example, if one were to note in the film Hulk the visual style reinforces themes of alienation, while in the film The Little Mermaid the visual style does no such thing, then listing all the ways in which the style of Hulk is totally awesome and then the ways in which that of Little Mermaid is not (Note: My own evaluation is precisely the opposite.) would be productive.
On the other hand, when comparing many subsidiary aspects of two objects, the second strategy - alternation - might prove best. One can then say, "Can openers are made of metal; true love is not," and follow it up with "Whereas true love is an abstract conception, whereas can openers are not." This allows for an ease of flow between sections - if every paragraph is about both can openers and true love, then subsequent paragraphs on the same cannot shock. One suffers here, though, in terms of intrasectional flow; it can be difficult to make smooth transitions from one idea to the other over and over within paragraphs.
The last approach - the chimera - is probably the riskiest, but it can be very effective in some cases. Notably, if one needs to offer summary of the items to be compared before comparing them, then having a summary section for each - i.e., the first strategy - and then moving to a section of alternation - i.e., the second strategy - can be just as handy as selecting either tactic on its own.
So when considering how to structure a comparison-contrast paper, it is best to consider precisely what one is comparing and contrasting.