Ideas for a "Compare and Contrast" essay?

Post Reply New Topic

Aspirin and Heroin - Two painkillers from Bayer

I got a lot of easy A's on my papers by writing about something that acted as an experiment.

This might fall under comparison/contrast
Like I did a paper where I took three dreams of mine. One that was the whole story with a lot of details. One that was details of a portion of the story only (like I forget the rest of the dream, but at one point, I was in this house, standing in a living room, the carpet was blue, there was a bird ornament on the table, there was 7 books sitting on the floor) and then I took a dream where I forgot all the details, but I remembered the main idea (like I was here, then I was there, then this guy was trying to, then I woke up).

Then I took three different dream dictionaries. I had one by Betty Bethards who is a mystic, but Carl Jung was her main inspiration. I went online and found one psychological only and one mystic/superstitious only.

I compared and contrasted all the definitions of my dreams to see if dictionaries were worth a darn.


ANOTHER ONE I DID dream based, was I took the dreams in the Bible that Joseph analyzed (for the pharoah, and for the other guys), and I compared and contrasted Betty Bethards' dream dictionary analysis of the same dreams to Joseph's. It was actually quite funny with Betty Bethards book because one was the guy got hanged, and his image, she said "To lose one's head" or something. That one I did I think I wrote the paper on my lunch break at work (after I had already analyzed the dreams and had notes), and I still got a 100% on it. I'm sure it had many grammatical errors and was poorly written. I probably wrote it no different than the way I type on this forum. But it was for a Religion Class and not English.

Compare and contrast ...

--the current financial crisis v. past financial crises (Japan in 1990s; U.S. Great Depression).

--Watchmen the movie v. the graphic novel

--Traditional newspapers/magazines/TV shows v. the Internet (web publications; blogs; etc.) as a source of information. You can compare and contrast (i) timeliness of information, (ii) accuaracy of information, (iii) depth of reporting, (iv) diversity of views, (v) scope of topics covered in each medium, etc.

Compare and contrast the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Being part of the "Global War on Terror", the combatants and tactics are (for the most part) the same. However, the outcomes look to be much different. Iraq looks pacified and democracy is starting to take root. Afghanistan is in a stalemate and is perhaps unwinnable. Why?

I once pulled a B out of English Composition with a comparison/contrast of Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice" and Pat Benatar's "Fire and Ice"...

The term "war" would be also an interesting issue to discuss: "The meaning of 'war' in a post 1648 and post 9/11 world"

Popular perception of the age of King Arthur
Vs.
Grim reality of the 5th century

This would be quite difficult: We do not have a lot of sources from this time. Writing seems not to be a past time very popular in the dark age ... if anybody could write at all or had any kind of past time. But the idea not not bad. May to shift this a bit into the High Medieval period (~1050 to ~1250). There is a lot of romantic nonsense around, but we have also some good sources regarding the real circumstances of the live of this time.

Another Idea, compare and contrast an aspect of Aspergers with Neurotypicals. One example might be what I posted called "learning." Teachers love papers on learning and teaching and so forth because it's informative to them. Just make sure your facts are straight because they did study the topic thoroughly.

But with that concept, you could even do polls on this site and compare and contrast to a poll on a site with a random sample. It's not completely scientific, but comparing stats between two forums like that would be interesting for any paper equal to or below sophomore in college.

Arthurian Mythology was one of my consuming passions for several years. Archaeological and epigraphic evidence exists from the time period, and while the native Briton population may not have been very big on written records, the Romans were involved with the island's history from 55 BC and into the 5th century AD. 5th century AD being the time period King Arthur theoretically existed.

I've got all the books...