How to use one novel to analyse another novel? Comparative literature essay

Question

I'm writing a comparative essay and my teacher suggested me to use one novel to analyse another novel. I didn't get it. Can you please help me.

Answer 1

Novelists often write about similar subjects or explore similar themes.  Sometimes this happens by coincidence, but sometimes one novel is intended, at least on one level, as a response to another.  For example:  In 1932, Aldous Huxley published Brave New World, a bleak account of a future in which, among other horrors, the culture of the past is systematically obliterated and replaced by a superficial life of drugs, casual sex and shallow entertainment.  In 1953, Ray Bradbury published Fahrenheit 451, a bleak account of a future in which, among other horrors, books are hunted out and destroyed by "firemen," and the culture of the past is replaced by a superficial life of shallow entertainment.  Finally, in 1968, Richard Brautigan published In Watermelon Sugar, a bleak account of life in a sort of hippie commune (called "iDEATH"), where the inhabitants devote themselves to a kind of never-ending drug trip (the sun is a different color every day), and the culture of the past has been relegated to a sort of giant landfill called The Forgotten Works.  All three of these books use similar elements of plot and setting to express similar ideas.

 

Sometimes novelists use works from the past as springboards.  John Updike's novel Gertrude and Claudius, for example, utilizes characters from Shakespeare's Hamlet.  The novel can be read as an independent work, but at the same time the connection with Hamlet gives it an extra level of meaning and (as a bonus) enhances our understanding of the earlier play.

 

Your teacher is actually making a very helpful suggestion here.  If you can find two or more novels that share elements of plot, setting or theme, you have plenty of material for a good paper.  And in the process you learn about two (or more) works instead of only one.