Short+Story+Comparisons

When comparing and contrasting two short stories you must consider genre, audience, purpose, main ideas, themes and author techniques. Think about the author's creation and use of setting/atmosphere, characterisation, plot, themes, build up of tension and suspense, foreshadowing, irony, humour, pathos, imagery (simile, metaphor, personification), use of senses (eg sound - alliteration, onomatopoeia) etc and how these contribute to the effectiveness of the stories and your enjoyment of them. You will also have to consider word choice, sentence structure etc. You will need to quote throughout your essay using the Point, Evidence, Explain formula to analyse and evaluate.

Suggestion: Compare and contrast two Roald Dahl Short Stories eg "Lamb to the Slaughter" and "The Landlady". You could focus on how Dah's language techniques create suspense or how he effectively creates successful characters.



Download your own copy of the texts so you can read them several times and annotate them. Create notes on setting, characterisation, plot, themes, tension/suspense etc. Research powerpoints and notes available on the internet to make notes in your own words. Remember the no copying/plagiarism rules. You can check out Youtube for presentations on the texts but remember visual versions may be different from the author's original story. YOUR NOTES WILL BE CHECKED BY YOUR TEACHER AND SHOULD BE KEPT ALONGSIDE YOUR COMPLETED LOG BOOK.

You should then consider the focus of your AVU essay. This is also known as your Line of Thought or Thesis. You will be given an opportunity to discuss this with your classmates and teacher.

Suggestion: Compare and contrast two Ray Bradbury Short Stories eg "Sound of Thunder" and "The Foghorn".



Suggestion: Compare and contrast "Examination Day" by Henry Slesar and "The Fun they Had" by Issac Asimov