Keeper of the Lost Cities and Divergent: Comparing and Contrasting YA Hero Journeys

Bridget's feedback:

"You are off to a good start! You've chosen your evidence and organized it into focused and specific paragraphs. I want to encourage you to push your thesis and analysis a little beyond the current main observation that the books are both similar and dissimilar. Let's zoom in on your conclusion to think about how to do this. Your final sentence pushes beyond the story elements (setting, conflict, character) to make a deeper point about subtext and effect: you write that both books are "exciting" and have messages about "friendship and determination." To create a more sophisticated thesis, ask yourself this: how do Messenger and Roth each use character, setting, and conflict to create exciting storytelling and convey their messages? For example, using your last body paragraph, it sounds like Messenger and Roth both use conflict to create excitement and the loss of important people to convey certain themes and messages, even if the conflicts are different (internal/external) and the people they lose formed different relationships with the main characters. What are your thoughts on this? Can you use the evidence you've collected to craft a thesis that includes a statement about shared characteristics (present in your current thesis statement, para. 1) and message (which currently doesn't appear until the end of the essay)? Some terms that might help with this include tropes, genre conventions, archetypes...

Once you've done this, you don't need to rewrite the whole essay. Instead, think about how to incorporate a sentence in each paragraph that links back to both the similarities/differences and the messages/themes (e.g., "Even though the settings differ, the locked and guarded nature of both teach the main characters how to survive"). In the case of your last body paragraph, you might consider expanding on your current last sentence, which already touches on the message. As regards your first body paragraph, finding what a character who "is told to stick with her friends" and a character that trusts no one have in common might be tricky, but I think with your evidence and your clear knowledge of the books, you can put together that analysis!

Your writing is clear and to the point, and you show good control of the mechanics. One thing to watch out for is correctly formatting the novels' titles--they should be italicized, with no quotation marks: Divergent."

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