Comparing Lord of the Flies and An Inspector Calls Without a List
Priya must write a 1,200-word comparative essay for her class: 'Compare how two writers present responsibility.' She has chosen Lord of the Flies and An Inspector Calls. After three days she has written about 300 words on each text, but the drafts sit in separate paragraphs. Her teacher says the essay is 'a parallel list, not a comparison' and that she has compared symbols rather than arguments. Priya's notes say 'the beast = evil' and 'Eva Smith = social responsibility', and she plans to write a section on each symbol. She has one more week, a 1,200-word limit and no access to secondary criticism. She wants to keep her symbol notes because she spent time on them. The essay must include some contextual discussion, but Priya is worried that context will become a bolted-on paragraph about post-war Britain.
1. Identify a shared criterion for comparison and explain why it is more useful than comparing 'the beast' and 'Eva Smith' as symbols.
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A stronger shared criterion is: how each writer presents responsibility as a struggle between individual conscience and collective pressure. That criterion can be applied to both texts and it forces Priya to make an argument rather than a list. The beast and Eva Smith are vehicles for that argument, not the argument itself. Comparing symbols alone tends to produce statements such as 'the beast represents evil and Eva represents responsibility', which do not answer how the writers present responsibility.
With the shared criterion, Priya can compare how Golding shows characters denying responsibility by projecting fear onto the beast, while Priestley shows characters denying responsibility by treating Eva as an abstraction. The comparison then becomes analytical: both writers dramatise evasion, but one uses the fear of a monster and the other uses the conventions of a drawing-room mystery. Priya can still use her symbol notes, but they must serve the criterion. She should ask of each symbol: what does it make a character do, and what does that reveal about the writer's view of responsibility?
2. Propose a paragraph structure for one comparative paragraph, using evidence from both texts and one contextual point.
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A comparative paragraph should begin with a topic sentence that makes a claim, not a text-by-text announcement. For example: 'Both writers show responsibility being displaced onto a vulnerable figure, but Golding presents this as a failure of civilisation while Priestley presents it as a failure of imagination.' Priya should then analyse one short piece of evidence from Lord of the Flies, perhaps a moment when a character's fear of the beast drowns out concern for Piggy or the littluns. She should name the method: dialogue, symbol, narrative perspective or setting. Then she should move to An Inspector Calls and analyse a parallel moment, such as Sheila accepting responsibility for Eva while others deflect it. The key is to use both texts in the same paragraph, not one after the other in separate sections.
The contextual point should be brief and functional. For Priestley, the 1912 setting and 1945 audience matter because they expose the complacency of the Birling generation. For Golding, the wartime evacuation and post-war anxiety about human nature matter because they shape the novel's view of civilisation as fragile. Context should explain why the method matters, not become a separate history paragraph.
3. Explain how Priya should integrate context without bolting it on.
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Context should enter when it changes the meaning of a specific word, image or structural choice. Priya should avoid a paragraph that begins 'In post-war Britain...' and then lists facts. Instead, she should attach context to analysis: for example, when Priestley has Birling call himself a 'hard-headed practical man', the 1912 setting makes that confidence look like the very complacency the 1945 audience has just lived through. The context explains the irony, not the plot.
For Golding, context can explain why the novel treats the beast as an internal force rather than an external enemy. The wartime experience of ordinary people committing atrocities makes the boys' descent plausible. Priya should use context to sharpen a comparison: Priestley attacks social evasion through a realistic drawing room, while Golding attacks the same evasion through an island fable. Context is not extra information; it is evidence about how the writer positions the audience. If a contextual detail does not help Priya explain a method or an effect, she should cut it.