Block, 1/16 - Pluggin' away at the Essay

  • P&P
  • Continue working on your essay; here are the expected due dates:
    • a provisional outline by the end of the day. 
      • A working thesis statement
      • Three topic sentences
      • At least three quotes per body paragraph
    • Next Wednesday, bring a rough draft
    • Next block day, Final draft is due at the end of the period
I would like you and your "pardner" to begin working through Google Drive so I can monitor your progress and provide insights to help you develop your essay. Here are the instructions:
  1. Get the Google Drive app (it's free)
  2. You must use a Gmail address (make one if your student account doesn't work)
  3. One person in the group must invite the other to the document you've created, which you will entitle "Satan and Don John: (and include your names)"
  4. Invite Mr. Reno by typing in chrisjreno@gmail.com
  5. Now we can all work on your essay together ; )

What should I include in my intro paragraph?
  • Hook! Write something interesting about evil, suffering, or dark, lurking characters. 
  • Both authors and their works: William Shakespeare's comedy Much Ado about Nothing and John Milton's epic Paradise Lost
  • Thesis statement 

How can we structure a thesis statement for this compare-contrast essay?

Here are some templates for your thesis statement that you can fill in/tweak with:

While Don John and Satan both ____________________________, they subtly differ: Don John ________________, while Satan _____________________________; this distinction shows _______ to be more profound depiction of evil than ________.


Although both villains ____________________________, Don John __________________________, whereas Satan ______________, thus revealing ____________ as the more profound depiction of evil. 
 
How should we structure our body paragraphs?

Here is a chunk that I've taken from your Bedford books to help you structure your body paragraphs (The examples are a bit short for your assignment, but use them as you consider which pattern you think would best serve your purposes):

Comparison and contrast


To compare two subjects is to draw attention to their similarities, although the word compare also has a broader meaning that includes a consideration of differences. To contrast is to focus only on differences.


Whether a comparison-and-contrast paragraph stresses similarities or differences, it may be patterned in one of two ways. The two subjects may be presented one at a time, block style, as in the following paragraph of contrast.



(TS) So Grant and Lee were in complete contrast, representing two diametrically opposed elements in American life. Grant was the modern man emerging; beyond him, ready to come on the stage, was the great age of steel and machinery, of crowded cities and a restless burgeoning vitality. Lee might have ridden down from the old age of chivalry, lance in hand, silken banner fluttering over his head. Each man was the perfect champion of his cause, drawing both his strengths and weaknesses from the people he led. —Bruce Catton, “Grant and Lee: A Study in Contrasts”


Or a paragraph may proceed point by point, treating the two subjects together, one aspect at a time. The following paragraph uses the point-by-point method to contrast the writer’s academic experiences in an American high school with those in an Irish convent.



(TS) Strangely enough, instead of being academically inferior to my American high school, the Irish convent was superior. In my class at home, Love Story was considered pretty heavy reading, so imagine my surprise at finding Irish students who could recite passages from War and Peace. In high school we complained about having to study Romeo and Juliet in one semester, whereas in Ireland we simultaneously studied Macbeth and Dickens’s Hard Times, in addition to writing a composition a day in English class. In high school, I didn’t even begin algebra until the ninth grade, while at the convent seventh graders (or their Irish equivalent) were doing calculus and trigonometry. —Margaret Stack, student



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