How to Compare and Contrast Literature

This article will teach people how to compare and contrast literature.  Literature is one of the greatest arts.  Literature is an art that helps people form a better understanding of their own life and the life around them.  Almost every piece of literature offers every reader a deeper insight into the human spirit, human condition, and human experience. From literature, the reader can form a better articulation of life.  Every human being goes through similar experiences in life.  We all experience love, loss, hate, friendship, betrayal, birth, death, sadness, happiness, laughter, anger, tragedy, etc.  The only difference is the way each individual handles those experiences.  

Literature gives people different ideas on how to handle human experience, yet every author also has a different way to present the notions of human experience.  Although there are many differences in each author’s treatment of life, there are also similarities.  A goal for every reader is to learn how to make connection between various literatures. Here are a few tips on how to compare and contrast literature:

----When you are reading, try to find one aspect that interests you.  Trace that one aspect through the entire piece of literature.  This aspect can be anything, such as a theme, symbol, setting, character, etc.  Be sure to analyze that aspect.  Take notes and bookmark the pages where that aspect stands out.  Try to determine how that one aspect impacts the entire piece of literature or life.

----Now, after completing that first of piece of literature, begin reading the second piece of literature.  Try to pay close attention and see if that same aspect from your first piece of literature shows up.  If that aspect shows up, then trace it also the same way you did for your first piece of literature.  Again, take notes and determine how that aspect impacts the work and/or life.

----When the second work is completed, begin reviewing both works of literature.  Specifically focus on the one aspect that interested you.  Review all of your notes and find some common ground regarding that aspect.  What that means is that you should first find the similarity or similarities of that aspect.

----Try to determine how both authors or characters treat that one element similarly.  For example, lets say that you want to trace the aspect of “love.”  Try to see if both authors treat love as a saving force.  Perhaps both authors treat it as a hopeful and rejuvenating force.

----Now that you have found a common ground, begin distinguishing the differences within that similarity or those similarities.  Find out the differences.  For example, lets say that you discovered both authors treat love as a saving force.  One author may treat love a temporally, such as break up or death occurs, and the other author may treat it as eternal, and it will never end.  In other words, for one author, love does end, and for the other author, love will always last, but either way love saves in the eyes of both authors.  

----At the end of comparing and contrasting the one aspect, try to determine what you learned from both pieces of literature regarding that aspect.  Ask yourself how each author’s treatment of that aspect gave you different perspectives about the work or life. 

---Most of all enjoy your reading and enjoy the art of literature.  

compare and contrast, compare and contrast literature, how to compare and contrast literature, comparing and contrasting literature, comparative literature, finding common ground, analyzing literature, how to analyze literature, literary analysis,