compare and contrast
Order Description
choose two texts and compare and contrast a particular theme or idea between the two. Your introduction should include a thesis statement that makes an arguable claim about how the two texts relate.
Choose your two texts from any of the works we’ve read (or watched) so far this semester. These texts include all the short stories, including “Turtle Goes to War,” The Grass Dancer, Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, and Smoke Signals. (Note: we will not have finished watching Smoke Signals in class by the time your paper draft is due; therefore, if you decide to use the film as one of your texts, you can either find a way to watch the whole thing ahead of time – it is on Netflix and available to rent for a small fee on various providers – , or simply draft as much of your paper as possible with the intent to amend and expand it after seeing the final 30-45 minutes of the film).
Once you have chosen your two texts and the central idea, you can start to develop your argumentative thesis statement. What specific idea or theme will you look at in order to compare and contrast the two works? Think back to the different themes and recurring ideas that we’ve discussed in class over the past few weeks. The best way to approach this assignment is to narrow your focus to a specific set of ideas, events/passages, or characters in the two texts you’ve chosen. Do you want to look at how time is working in The Grass Dancer and “Train Time”? Or how about the representation of Native women in “As It was In the Beginning” and “Yellow Woman”? How about looking at how Mercury Thunder deals with grief versus Anna May in “Swimming Upstream”? Or how certain characters work to reclaim their Native heritage in modern ways in The Lone Ranger… and “Show Me Yours”? So, notice how each of these options includes two texts as well as a very specific idea or theme that ties them together.
compare and contrast