College Knowledge

Essay #3: Comparison OR Contrast

In order to do a closer, more reflective analysis of two books we’ve read, you are asked to consider whether the protagonists (main characters) of The Trial and Death of Socrates and In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer are fundamentally similar or different. So here’s the topic:

Compare OR contrast Irene Gut and Socrates. If you write a comparison essay, then you’ll be demonstrating their significant similarities. If you write a contrast essay, you’ll be demonstrating their significant differences.

In your introduction, you’ll need to tell why the topic is an important or interesting one, introduce the authors and titles of both books, and end with your thesis—a claim about whether they Socrates and Irene are similar or different.

In each of three body paragraphs, you’ll analyze in detail—using your reasoning and selected quotes from each book—one aspect of their difference or similarity. You’ll have a topic sentence that refers to both persons and to difference or similarity.

In your conclusion, you’ll subtly reveal to your reader why it was worth her/his while to read your analysis.

You will end with a Works Cited page that looks like this but includes only those documents which appear in your essay. I have not supplied all the information in these entries because you need to learn where to find this info and to put it in yourself!

Works Cited

Opdike, Irene Gut. In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer. With Jennifer

Armstrong. City of Publication: Publisher, year.

Plato. Apology. Trial pages (in Arabic numbers).

---. Crito. Trial pages (in Arabic numbers).

---. Euthyphro. Trial pages (in Arabic numbers).

---. Phaedo Death Scene. Trial (in Arabic numbers).

---. The Trial and Death of Socrates. Trans. G. M. A. Grube. City of Publication:

Publisher, year.