IntroductionIt is easy to compare two characters—and do a good
job of it—if you remember four points: - The Purposes of
Comparison You can compare any two things—an apple and an
aardvark, or a slug and a skyscraper. It's easy to compare
things like that: a slug is ___ whereas a skyscraper is ___. You
could fill in the blanks without even thinking. And that's the
problem: you can do it without thinking. That's why so many
papers comparing characters are (say it softly) bad and (even
worse) boring. The writers don't know their purpose for
comparison in general or for comparing those two characters in
particular. There are three general purposes for comparing any
characters: 1) You compare things in order to find meaningful
similarities and meaningful differences. The more important
these are, the more important—and interesting—the comparison.
That's why the whole slug/skyscraper thing falls apart. 2) As a
student, you compare literary characters in order to demonstrate
your understanding of the work as a whole.