Paper 2: Comparative Essay Sample Responses

For Standard Level Students Paper 2 counts towards 35% of your final course grade, and
25% at Higher Level.

Paper 2 contains four questions of a general nature which require students to write a
comparative essay referring to two literary works studied during the course. Students
are required to answer one question only.

The essay is written under examination conditions, without access to the studied works.
Students will be expected to compare and contrast two of the works studied in relation
to the question chosen. Attention should be paid to the relevance of the argument to the
question chosen and to the appropriateness of the works selected by the student to
address the question. Students are expected to make detailed reference to the works in
their answer, but they are not expected to include quotations from them.

Under no circumstances can students use for paper 2 a work that has been already used
for another assessment component, be it the Internal Assessment for both SL and HL,
or the HL essay for HL.

***

Essay Layout―Basic Elements

• The purpose of the text

• The author’s choice of style, tone and structure/diction
• The reader’s response
• The meaning or message of the text

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You may find the PEEL Method useful

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Paper 2: Comparative Essay Exam question

Authors sometimes tell their stories in a non-linear fashion. Compare how

and for what reasons the authors of at least two works that you have read
have told their stories in a non-linear fashion.

Slaughter House V and The Things They Carried

Student Example

Introduction: Authors’ Purpose & Your Thesis Statement

Readers are often intrigued by war stories, because they want to know if people can
persevere in adverse circumstances. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
and Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut both show how soldiers struggle to deal with
war and its aftermath unsuccessfully. The authors both use a disjointed and non-linear
narration to show readers how soldiers remember, experience and suffer from the
horrors of war.

Make your first body paragraph about both works

Both novels are written by authors who remember their experiences of one war in the
context of another war, using non-linear narrative structures. In 1990, during the Gulf
War in Kuwait, Tim O’Brien wrote the novel The Things They Carried, which is about

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the Vietnam War of the 1960s. O’Brien, who is a Vietnam veteran, writes as a soldier
who is traumatised by the violence that he experienced, mixing ‘truth-story’ with
‘happening-truth’ to create a work that is neither truth nor fiction, neither memoir nor
novel. For example, one chapter, called ‘Love’, is about how O’Brien meets with another
veteran, Jimmy Cross, years after the war to drink coffee and gin and remember the
atrocities for which they could not forgive themselves. His friend tells O’Brien about a
woman he loved, Martha. But his love was unrequited, because Martha was scared to be
with a veteran who had experienced such violence, and this left him heartbroken. There
seems to be an inescapable stigma surrounding Vietnam veterans. This story within a
story shows the reader how war never stops damaging the lives of its veterans, long after
it is over.

Examiners are looking for connectives in a Comparative Essay. Use words

such as “Similarly” or “In contrast” frequently.

Through a similar use of frame narration, Kurt Vonnegut shows how the effects of
World War II have haunted its veterans even after it ended. The novel, which is semi-
autobiographical, is written at the height of the Vietnam War in 1969. Vonnegut
begins Slaughterhouse-Five with a dialogue between him and a fellow veteran O’Hare
and his wife Mary. O’Hare’s wife is angry with Vonnegut for writing a novel about the
war, because she assumes that he will glorify war. Vonnegut promises her, though, that
his novel will discourage young men from fighting in wars. He explains that it will be
short and jumbled because there is nothing intelligent one can say about a massacre.
Furthermore, he dedicates the novel to her, which is a clear sign to readers that he aims
to uphold his promise to Mary. In the context of 1967, when this work was written, the
protest movement against the Vietnam War was growing. This use of frame narration
shows the reader how Vonnegut finds war senseless. This extra layer of narration is very
similar to O’Brien’s way of telling his stories in The Things They Carried, which the
author uses for the same purpose of showing the adverse effects of war on its veterans
and warning against the senselessness of the Gulf War. The non-linear, broken
narration, which includes veterans remembering war, acts as a reminder to people how
the atrocities of war live on.

Return to the purpose of the authors towards the end of each paragraph.
The last sentence of each paragraph should return to the essay question and
possibly use some of the key words from the essay question.

The disjointed and non-linear narrative is also used in both novels as a way of showing
readers how soldiers experience and deal with extremely violent situations. In The
Things They Carried, O’Brien remembers killing a young Vietnamese man, distancing
himself from the violent action by describing the gruesome destruction of the young

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man’s body without emotions. The victim’s eye was shot through like a “star”, his body
was “oatmeal” and parts of his face were “missing”. Instead of writing about his feelings
of guilt and disgust, O’Brien uses imagery. Furthermore, he fantasizes about the young
Vietnamese man’s youth, growing up at school, possibly being teased by others for his
love of calculus. This flashback is contrasted with the description of a butterfly landing
on the young man’s nose. O’Brien’s platoon mate rationalises that if O’Brien hadn’t
killed the boy, someone else would have. This use of dialogue, imagery and non-linear
structure allows O’Brien to retell this violent act without facing his pain or showing
remorse for killing the young man.

The main character of Slaughterhouse Five, Billy Pilgrim, uses similar though different
devices for coping with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Billy Pilgrim, a fictional
character, is, like Vonnegut himself, a WWII veteran, Prisoner of War (POW) and
survivor of the bombing of Dresden. The novel ends with the protagonist climbing out of
a mountain of dead bodies. The imagery is very gruesome and graphic. Every time Billy
puts one dead body behind him, another appears on the horizon. In a sense, this is an
analogy of war itself, as Vonnegut suggests that once one war finishes another one
begins. “And so it goes,” the narrator states throughout the novel after someone is killed,
which is frequently. This passive phrase suggests that death and destruction are
inevitable. The language makes the reader feel as helpless as the protagonist but willing
to accept the atrocities for what they are. In a similar way O’Brien adopts a helpless tone
throughout The Things They Carried by using phrases such as “this is true” to suggest
that the horrible events should be accepted for what they are. Just as O’Brien’s mind
wanders and scenes flash forward or backward every time there is a violent situation, so
too does Billy’s. Billy believes that he was abducted by aliens, the Tralfamadorians, who
taught him to time travel, using “the fourth dimension.” This allows him to look back at
the horrors of war as just one time in his life and also to flash forward to other, better
times. This device for coping with posttraumatic stress disorder is more extreme than
O’Brien’s use of imagination and “truth-story,” though it serves the same function. The
non-linear storylines of both works show their readers how veterans deal with post-
traumatic stress disorder.

For Criterion B “Analysis & Evaluation”, it is important to return to the

effects of the language on the reader.

Finally, both works use non-linear structures to show readers how wars inflict mental
damage to veterans. In The Things They Carried, several characters are depicted as
mentally instable. One story is about Mitchell Sanders, who went on patrol and
eventually went crazy after hearing strange noises, like talking monkeys, cocktail parties
and chanting. Even after he ordered for the whole region to be burned down by air
strikes, he still heard the noises. Eventually Sanders admits to O’Brien that he had

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embellished parts of his story, which makes the reader question Sander’s sanity and
reliability as a narrator.

In a similar way, Billy Pilgrim is insane and Vonnegut’s story is nothing but fantasy.
While Kurt Vonnegut claims that “most” of his story about Billy is true, it would be
impossible for anyone to have such knowledge of another man’s thoughts and actions.
What’s more, Vonnegut’s story about Billy’s encounters with the Tralfamadorians, his
sexual contact with a movie star and his time travelling must be fantasy, despite
Vonnegut’s very matter-of-fact tone. There are hints that Billy is perceived as crazy by
other characters, such as his optometry clients and his daughter, who finds him freezing
in a house with a broken boiler. The reader, however, suspends all disbelief in
Vonnegut’s story, because it is based on the premise that nothing could be more absurd
than surviving the firebombing of Dresden, which killed over 135,000 people in one
night. In fact Vonnegut himself survived the bombing as is described in this fictional
tale, as a prisoner in a meat locker. Vonnegut and O’Brien both earn a certain right to
tell fantastical, non-linear stories that comment critically on war, because they both
survived the horrors of the war.

To conclude, both novels use a non-linear, disjointed narration to show the reader how
veterans remember, experience and suffer from war. The novels are written in the
context of one war about another war as a warning that war will always be horrific. Both
Vonnegut and O’Brien mix fact and fiction as a means of making the senselessness of
war sensible to readers.

Try to end your essay with some words of wisdom.

***

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Criterion A: Knowledge, understanding, interpretation and comparison – 8
out of 10

The student is very knowledgeable about the two novels and shows a high degree of
understanding. There are many references to the contexts in which the works were
written, including biographical information on the authors. Interpretations of the novels
are very insightful, as the student explores the authors’ common purpose of
commenting on the senseless violence of war. For the most part, these interpretations
are relevant to the essay question, about the non-linear storylines. While the novels are
compared throughout the essay, the student struggles, at times, to compare them in
relation to the question.

Criterion B: Analysis and evaluation – 9 out of 10

The essay question lends itself well to analysis and evaluation, as it asks for an
exploration of non-linear, narrative techniques. What’s more, the literary works are very
appropriate for this question, as they are written in a non-linear fashion. The student
includes quite a few references to the works, commenting on a broad range of stylistic
features, such as imagery, unreliable narrator, flash backs, fantasy, tone, while
maintaining focus on the non-linear nature of both texts and the effects of these on the
reader.

Criterion C: Coherence, balance, focus and organisation - 5 out of 5

This essay takes a very balanced approach, alternating its focus on each work and
comparing them in passing. The essay has a strong sense of structure, which is due to
the connective phrases and linking words.

Criterion D: Language - 5 out of 5

The student’s use of English is very academic and articulate. Very complex ideas are
articulated effectively through the student’s use of vocabulary and syntax. Literary
terms are used accurately throughout the essay.

***

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Paper 2: Comparative Essay Exam question

The struggle against injustice is a theme that speaks to readers. Compare the ways in
which two authors of two literary works have depicted unjust worlds.

Disgrace and The Tempest

Student example

Readers are often captured by stories that depict some kind of injustice. As much as
people would like to live in a just world, we know that reality is different. People suffer
unnecessarily from injustice all around the world all the time. Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
and The Tempest by William Shakespeare both explore the theme of injustice and depict
characters struggling to find justice. Although The Tempest is a play written in the early
days of colonialism and Disgrace is a novel written in a post-colonial, post-Apartheid
South Africa, the works explore the theme of injustice through point-of-view, symbolism
and motif. The authors show the importance of reconciliation and love as means of
overcoming injustices.

In both Disgrace and The Tempest, the protagonists, David Lurie and Prospero, are
powerful people who have become victims of some form of injustice. David Lurie, a
white professor in South Africa, was fired from his university after having sex with a
student. After he has ‘fallen from grace’ he moves to his daughter’s farm, where he
becomes the victim of a violent attack which leaves him physically scarred. The black
men who burn him also rape his daughter. Even though David and his daughter, Lucy,
eventually learn the identity of the men, it seems impossible for them to be brought to
justice because pressing charges could bring even more violence. Coetzee’s novel is told
from third person point-of-view though it uses free indirect narration throughout the
novel, telling readers his thoughts through a limited but omniscient narrator. This
makes the reader somewhat sympathetic to him, despite that he is a perpetrator of
injustice as well. While he refuses to say ‘sorry’ to the university, he eventually comes to
accept that his new existence, in a post-colonial, post-Apartheid South Africa, means
living modestly and working at an animal shelter.

In a somewhat similar but also very different way, the protagonist in The Tempest,
Prospero, is both a victim of one injustice and the perpetrator of another. Prospero and
his daughter Miranda are stranded on an island after being usurped and banished by his
brother, Antonio. Even though they seem to be the victim of power hungry people, they
too are guilty of stealing the power away from their island’s rightful owner, Caliban.
Through dramatic asides and dialogue, the audience learns that Caliban feels bitter
about being enslaved by Prospero and Miranda. Nevertheless, the audience does not
sympathise with him, because he is crass and savage in his ways. The perspective of the
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play favours Prospero, who seems to have a God-given, colonial right to bark orders at
his servants Caliban and Ariel. Unlike David Lurie, Prospero does not end up a lowly
outcast. Instead he returns to his dukedom as the rightful heir, because his brother sees
the error of his ways and Prospero forgives him. While reconciliation is the answer to
injustices of the past in both literary works, The Tempest suggests that some leaders are
above apologising.

Both The Tempest and Disgrace use symbolism to explore the theme of injustice and
comment on the nature of power in their worlds. In Disgrace, dogs appear throughout
the novel, representing servitude and low status. There are dogs on Lucy’s farm, which
Petrus, her black farmhand, helps look after initially. In fact Petrus introduces himself
to David as ‘the dog-man’, which suggests that he has a low status on the farm as well.
Once the dogs are killed by the intruders, Petrus is relieved of his duties and acts more
like an owner of the farm. He knows and protects the attackers, and he threatens to let
them attack again, if he is not given land rights. Lucy agrees to marry Petrus for
protection and her father is forced to accept there will be no justice. In fact, David Lurie
becomes the new ‘dog-man’, as he volunteers at the animal shelter, putting dogs to sleep
and disposing of their corpses. The symbol of the dog in Disgrace is Coetzee’s way of
commenting on how the injustices of apartheid are starting to reverse, as white people
concede power to black people. Dogs also symbolise David’s transition from detesting
animals to loving them.

Symbols in The Tempest are used to a different end, as they point toward the coloniser’s
rightful power to inflict injustice on others. Prospero’s books symbolise his power,
which lies in his knowledge of magic. While his love for books, knowledge and magic are
what cost him his dukedom before the start of the play, books also symbolise his power
to regain his dukedom. After Prospero’s brother, Antonio, and his shipwrecked crew
come to Prospero’s island, Caliban naively thinks he can guide Antonio to Prospero’s
books, steal his books and regain control of the island. However, Prospero’s use of magic
and command of Ariel, his fairy servant, allow him to see and know all that happens on
his island, and so he sets a trap for his enemies and regains his control over his
dukedom. While Prospero and David Lurie are both powerful men of knowledge, they
end up in very different places. The symbol of the dog in Disgrace is very different from
they symbol of Prospero’s books in The Tempest. Coetzee employs the symbolism of
dogs in Disgrace to show how knowledge does not lead to an inherent right to rule.
While the injustice that Prospero inflicts on Caliban seems rightful in the colonial
context of this play, the injustice that David Lurie inflicts on young women does not go
unchecked in post-apartheid South Africa.

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Both The Tempest and Disgrace explore the theme of injustice and they comment on the
nature of power through the motifs of sex and love. In both works men attempt to exert
power over women through sex. David Lurie, a middle-aged man sleeps with a young
prostitute frequently and takes advantage of his student, Melanie. David struggles to see
the parallels between his daughter’s rape and his own sexual prowess on the university
campus. Nevertheless, something gradually changes in him as he works at the animal
shelter. He begins to have sex with Bev Shaw, who is his age and unattractive. He sees a
kind of nobility in loving her, just as he sees nobility in taking care of the dogs. Sex, for
David, changes from a being means of exerting power over women to a means of means
of loving someone. If there is any justice for Lucy’s rape, it is that her father has stopped
being a sexual predator. Through this motif of sex, Coetzee seems to comment on power
relations in South Africa, suggesting that the injustices of apartheid can only be
reconciled by if the white ruling-class is willing to change their ways and accept the
changes that come their way.

Sex and love are motifs that can be found in The Tempest as well. Caliban tries to exert
his power over Prospero by raping his daughter, Miranda. He regrets that his attempt
was not successful, as he would have happily populated the island with little Calibans, as
he says. Because Caliban behaves so savagely, Prospero feels entitled to take the island
from him. He tries, in vain, to teach Caliban to be more civilised, but Caliban is a bad
servant and not loyal to his master. In this colonial context, the audience senses that any
Caliban deserves any injustice that Prospero inflicts on him. In contrast, the injustice
that Antonio inflicted on his brother requires reconciliation. When Prospero discovers
that his daughter has fallen in love with his enemy’s son, Ferdinand, it is easier to
forgive his brother of any wrongdoings. The play ends with a moralistic soliloquy in
which forgiveness is presented as the remedy for injustice. Similarly, David Lurie comes
to realise this and drives to Melanie’s parents house to ask them for forgiveness for what
he has done to their daughter. It is only through his love for dogs, Bev Shaw and his
daughter, Lucy, that he realises that this step is necessary to right his wrongs and give
Melanie’s parents some sense of justice. When this novel was written in 1999, only a few
years after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, showing remorse and asking for
forgiveness were easily identifiable themes for South Africans. In both literary works,
love is depicted as a solution for solving injustice.

In conclusion, the readers of The Tempest and Disgrace are taken on journeys to two
very different worlds where characters struggle to overcome the injustices inflicted on
them. Despite the one work being written hundreds of years after the other, and despite
their different literary formats, both works employ point-of-view, symbolism and motif
to show audiences that love and reconciliation are the solutions for overcoming
injustice.

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 Examiner's marks and comments

Criterion A: Knowledge, understanding, interpretation and comparison –

10 out of 10

This essay shows excellent understanding of the novel and the play in relation to the
essay question. The examples from the works are relevant to the question about
injustice. Furthermore, the essay constantly compares and contrasts the works, pointing
to key differences between Prospero and David Lurie with respect to the question about
injustice.

Criterion B: Analysis and evaluation – 10 out of 10

The essay is rather detailed about the use of literary features, such as free-indirect
speech, motifs and soliloquys. The student evaluates the importance of these features in
commenting on the themes of justice, colonialism and power. Even though works are
two different literary forms (a play and a novel), the student is still able to make
meaningful comparison of how the authors construct meaning in similar and different
ways. This is possible because the student focuses on overarching techniques, such as
point-of-view, symbols and motifs, and form-specific examples of these, such as
dramatic asides or omniscient narration.

Criterion C: Coherence, balance, focus and organisation - 5 out of 5

The essay develops the idea that reconciliation and love are needed to overcome the
injustices caused by colonialism. It is coherent, because it gives examples from the
works to support this claim. It is focused, because it explains the relevance of these
examples in relation to the essay question. It is organised and balanced, as the
paragraphs alternate between works and use connectives to compare and contrast them.

Criterion D: Language - 5 out of 5

The essay is very well written, using a range of vocabulary, literary terms and sentence
structures. Complex ideas are expressed effectively through the use of concise and
accurate language.

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 Paper 2: Comparative Essay
Essay question: In what ways do two of your literary works act as a voice for
the oppressed?

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison tells the story of a group of young black girls in
Lorrain, Ohio in 1940-1941 and how they interact with their community. Persepolis by
Marjane Satrapi tells the story of Marjane’s early life in Iran during the fall of the Shah
and the Islamic revolution and her teenage years in Austria. Both of these works are
written to show how people have been oppressed during these times. The Bluest Eye
specifically shows people of colour and the hardships that black women have faced.
Persepolis specifically shows women living in Iran during the Islamic revolution. Both
Morrison and Satrapi are very successful in using their respective stories as a voice for
oppression, as they both tell their stories through the first-person perspective, as well as
using imagery and symbolism.

The use of point of view, specifically the first-person perspective in The Bluest Eye and
Persepolis makes the novels an even stronger voice for the oppressed as they allow the
readers to view the oppressive situations from the point of view of those being
oppressed. While many chapters are told from an omniscient third-person point of view,
several chapters about the young, black girls are told in the first-person point of view,
through the eyes of Claudia. Although Claudia is not Toni Morrison, she acts as a vehicle
for Morrisson to tell a story about what it was like for her growing up in Lorain, Ohio in
the early 1940s. One of the scenes shown through Claudia’s perspective describes how
she rips a white Raggedy Anne doll to pieces out of contempt. The use of first-person
perspective allows the reader to understand the hatred Claudia feels towards white
people and how unfair she thinks it is that there are no black dolls or role models. The
reader understands how confusing oppression is to young children who still have an
innocent view of the world, as Claudia does not understand why she lives a completely
different life to young white girls such as Shirley Temple. In fact, she resents her black
friends for idolising Shirley Temple, and she resents Shirley Temple for getting to tap
dance with the famous black actor and tap dancer, Bojangles. She feels that Bojangles
betrays his entire race by dancing on Shirley Temple’s command in the movies. Just as
an older and wiser Claudia looks back on her youth and tells the story of her friends, as a
frame narrator, so too does Marjane Satrapi look back on her youth and tell the story of
how she was oppressed during the Islamic Revolution. In one scene, for example,
Marjane tells the story of how she is stopped by the Guardians of the Revolution on the
street for wearing Nike trainers and a jeans jacket. These women who police other
women and girls threaten to take her to the committee, where Marjane knows that she

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would be tortured. Fortunately she is allowed to go free, but she goes home scared.
From her point of view, the reader sees how real her fear is. What’s more, the medium of
the graphic novel allows her to both show events, using drawings of herself and speech
bubbles, and comment on events, using voice over boxes and hindsight wisdom.
Morrison and Satrapi’s use of first-person narration amplifies their stories’ effectiveness
as being a voice for those who are being oppressed which includes themselves. They do
this so that readers can feel for the oppressed and act out against the injustices that
cause this oppression.

Furthermore, Satrapi and Morrison use images and imagery respectively to paint a clear
picture of this oppression in the readers’ mind. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison clearly
describes the situations where the girls are being oppressed, such as when Pecola is
surrounded by a group of young boys who are taunting her about her skin colour and
her father’s sleeping habits. Such detailed descriptions of bullying are exemplified
further in the desciption of Cholly, a character who is forced to have sex with his
girlfriend at gunpoint, whilst two white men watch. Morrison describes this situation
with such graphic detail, referring to the berry stains on his girlfriend’s dress, enabling
the reader to visualise the angst, struggle and oppression that the characters experience.
The graphic novel Persepolis, in contrast, uses a very simple, cartoonish art style to
illustrate the various forms of oppression that take place in Iran in the 1980s. Her
abstract, child-like drawings reduce violence to their basic forms. For example, her
depiction of tortured, even dismembered, prisoners is absent blood, guts and colour.
This simple style engages the reader. By not drawing the details of murder and torture,
the reader is forced to fill in the gaps, much like Marjane as a little girl is forced to
imagine unimaginable acts of violence. Satrapi and Morrison’s use of images and
imagery respectively as a means of engaging readers’ imagination and helping them
visualise the atrocities that people endured in these oppressive societies, giving the
oppressed a voice.

Symbolism is another literary technique that both Satrapi and Morrison use to get
readers to think about what it is like to live under oppression. Throughout The Bluest
Eye, the young girls return to the symbol of blue eyes, as it is Pecola’s greatest wish to
have bluest eyes. In The Bluest Eye, blue eyes symbolise the privilege, wealth and beauty
that is defined by and enjoyed exclusively by white people. Even though young white
girls with blue eyes are part of the group oppressing the young black girls, they are still
viewed positively in the eyes of Pecola and Frieda. Pecola wants nothing more than blue
eyes, even though this is a genetic impossibility that is never explained to her. Claudia is
the only one who detests blue eyes, as they symbolise the oppressors she hates. In
contrast these young girls in The Bluest Eye who want nothing more than to be just like

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their oppressors, Marjane, in Persepolis wishes to be as different from her oppressors as
she can be. The graphic novel opens with a chapter called The Veil, which depicts how
school-going girls do not understand why they have to cover up. Throughout her graphic
novel, Satrapi returns to the veil as a symbol of the oppressor. The Guards of the
Revolution tell women not to show any hair, though several, like Satrapi and her
mother, show a little hair to show their defiance of the regime. The use of symbolism
allows the reader to understand the relationships between the oppressed and the
oppressors in both stories. While Marjane is an educated, secular young girl who
realises what’s going on is not fair or just, the young, uneducated black girls strangely
admire their oppressors for having what they will never be able to have.

Although Toni Morrison and Marjane Satrapi have written their stories using different
media, they both rely on narrative techniques and symbolism to give oppressed people a
voice. While Morrison depicts the struggle of growing up black in Lorain, Ohio in the
1940s using imagery, Satrapi shows the horrors endured by many during the Islamic
Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War during the 1980s using simple, cartoonish images.
The messages of their stories are very similar: the injustices suffered by many people at
the hands of a few will not go unnoticed. Satrapi and Morrison depict the stories of the
oppressed to give readers the strength to rise up against such injustice.

***

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P2 Example - Persepolis and The Bluest Eye
A: Knowledge, understanding, interpretation and comparison - 8 out of 10
Despite the essay’s brevity, it covers a lot of ground. The student has selected references
to the works carefully and related them to the question about oppression. The relevance
of one or two of the references, such as the Bojangles character, is sometimes
questionable. Overall, there could have been one or two more examples from the works.
Nevertheless, comparisons are frequently made between the works in relation to the
question.
B: Analysis and evaluation - 8 0ut of 10
The student consistently returns to the effects of the authors’ language on the reader.
This essay is structured around two common stylistic features and one feature that is
unique to each work. It is good that she distinguishes between imagery and images or
drawing style. The student’s treatment of drawing in style is particularly good because it
connects Satrapi’s artistic choices to her message. Comparisons of authorial choices are
consistently made throughout the essay.

C: Coherence, balance, focus and organisation - 5 out of 5

This essay is very balanced and follows a clear structure that enables it to be balanced.
Perhaps what keeps her essay focused is its ability to avoid too much summary of the
works and explore the essay question. The last sentence of each paragraph seems to tie
everything back to the thesis statement, which in turn answers the question.

D: Language - 5 out of 5
This essay may be a bit wordy in places, but it generally does not waste words. Complex
ideas require complex language, and the language of this essay fits the bill.

***

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