Paper 2: the comparative literary essay
Paper 2 is a comparative essay written under timed conditions: 1 hour 45 minutes, answering one of four questions and comparing two works you have studied. It is worth 25% of the final grade and 25 marks, with a criterion dedicated to comparison.
Core rules
- Answer the exact question. Underline its key terms and let them govern every paragraph; a rehearsed essay on 'theme' scores poorly even if fluent.
- Comparison must be integrated: both texts in each body paragraph, linked by a connective that does argumentative work ('whereas', 'similarly', 'the contrast exposes').
- Use precise evidence from both works - short quotations, named scenes, structural details - and analyse authorial choices, not characters' personalities.
- Similarity alone is thin. The strongest comparative claims show what a difference reveals: two endings that both mourn, but one through irony and the other through lyric repetition, produce different politics of grief.
- Respect genre: a play's ending works through staging and silence; a novel's through narration and time.
Worked example
Question: 'Compare the significance of endings in two works you have studied.' A candidate pairs a novel that closes by shifting to a colonial administrator's proposed book with a novel that closes on a boat fighting the current. Reasoning: both endings move from the protagonist's story to a larger, impersonal frame, and both use that shrinkage to produce irony. The difference is what the irony targets - colonial historiography in one, the persistence of desire in the other. That double claim, proved from both texts, is a comparison, not two summaries.
Traps
- Two mini-essays stapled together.
- Ignoring the second work until the conclusion.
- Superficial parallels ('both use imagery').
- Quoting only one text.
- Choosing works that cannot answer the question.