PreIB Eng 10
Comparative Essay - Short Stories
Choose one of these questions as the topic for your essay:
Stories within stories are likely to add an intriguing dimension to narratives. In works you have
studied show how writers have used embedded narratives to enrich their short stories.
Important moments in narrative often have dramatic or even theatrical elements. Show to what
extent two writers in your study have enhanced significant moments by giving them such qualities.
In what ways and for what reasons do the short stories you have studied seek to represent thought
or interior consciousness? In your answer you should refer to two of the works you have studied.
“Fiction is an essentially rhetorical art – that is to say the novelist or short-story writer persuades us
to share a certain view of the world for the duration of the reading experience.” To what extent do
you agree with this statement? In your answer you should refer to two of the works in your study.
“In my end is my beginning.” How far, and in what ways, do two protagonists move forward or, in
some sense, end up where they started?
“Conventional behaviour is not always moral.” To what extent, and in what ways, does this statement
apply to two short stories in your study?
Analyse the extent to which the reliability of the narrator can affect the reader’s understanding of
events in two of the works you have studied.
“The art of the storyteller is to hold the attention of the reader.” With reference to two works you
have studied, discuss ways in which the writers have employed techniques that hold your attention.
Paying close attention to detail in two of the works in your study, explain why the authors have used
either chronological or non-chronological approaches to their narrative.
To what extent and in what ways has the concept of escape played a role in two of the works you
have studied?
With close reference to two of the works you have studied, show in what ways and for what purposes
authors have portrayed the power of friendship in their works.
“I am the master of my fate.” To what extent and in what ways does the literature you have read
depict characters who are, or are not, in control of their fate? Refer closely to two of the works you
have studied in your answer.
With close reference to two of the works you have studied discuss the role and significance of ritual
and/or celebration of any kind.
Referring closely to two of the works you have studied, show to what extent and in what ways
writers have made use of the contrast or similarity between exterior and interior settings.