Establish an answer, not just a topic

An introduction names the two works and makes an argument about the question. A shared subject isn't enough. The reader needs to see what comparing the works will reveal about that subject.

A comparative thesis gives the central answer, connecting the two works through a meaningful relationship. You might identify a similarity, a difference, or a similarity complicated by a difference. You don't need to give all three possibilities equal space.

Start with the question's focus, bring in the works, then offer your comparative judgment. The diagram below traces this movement: Question focus → Works and authors → Comparative thesis → Direction of argument. These are functions to fulfil, not a compulsory four-sentence formula.

The continuous model

The four model passages in this sheet belong to one essay, written in response to this invented question:

Discuss how two works you have studied present the relationship between violence and authority.

The essay pairs William Shakespeare's Macbeth (c. 1606), a tragedy, with Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958), a novel. Form matters here. Shakespeare can expose a ruler before a watching audience; Achebe can shift between communal perspectives and an individual's private motives.

Paper 2 requires detailed reference, not memorized quotations. For that reason, the model uses precise paraphrases of actions, scenes and structural choices—an appropriate approach for an essay written without access to the works.

Model introduction

In William Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth and Chinua Achebe's novel Things Fall Apart, violence promises to establish authority, yet exposes how insecure that authority is. Macbeth increasingly relies on eliminating perceived threats to maintain his royal power. For Okonkwo, violent decisiveness proves the masculine standing he fears losing. Neither writer treats authority as something an individual simply possesses: others must recognize it. Shakespeare dramatizes the collapse of that recognition through Macbeth's public behaviour and eventual defeat, while Achebe reveals the gap between Okonkwo's self-image and his community's changing responses. Both works expose the limitations of authority sustained by violence, but their endings offer a sharp distinction. Macbeth stages the possibility of political restoration; Things Fall Apart exposes a colonial power able to impose both force and its own account of events.

What the introduction accomplishes

The opening gives an immediate answer: violence appears to secure authority but reveals its instability. From there, the comparison becomes more precise. Both protagonists depend on recognition from other people, yet the endings suggest different possibilities for legitimate authority.

By addressing the question rather than supplying general knowledge about the works, this interpretation supports Criterion A. It also sets the focus required by Criterion C. There is no detached historical preamble, nor does the introduction recount either plot.

Build your introduction around a claim you can develop through specific choices in both works. Its final distinction should be one the body of the essay will actually demonstrate.

Build around a shared claim

Build a comparative paragraph around an idea that needs both works, rather than everything you remember about one of them. Choose evidence that lets you explain how each writer constructs meaning and why the relationship between the works matters.

One useful way to move through the paragraph is Shared claim → Evidence and choice in one work → Comparative pivot → Evidence and choice in the other work → Comparative judgment. The diagram below shows this movement. Treat it as a flexible structure: a complex point may need linked paragraphs, as long as the comparison stays active.

Model comparative analysis: authority as performance

Both writers expose violence as a performance of strength that betrays dependence on other people's judgment. In Macbeth, the banquet should display a secure ruler presiding over an ordered court. Instead, Shakespeare uses it to stage the consequences of Macbeth's attempt to eliminate Banquo. The ghost appears, Macbeth visibly reacts, and the ceremony fractures. Because the guests cannot see what he sees, his behaviour becomes an alarming spectacle without an explanation they can share. Lady Macbeth tries to manage the gathering, further exposing the gap between royal appearance and private disorder. Violence has removed Banquo. It has not given Macbeth command over the public image on which authority depends. Achebe exposes a similar insecurity beneath Okonkwo's apparent decisiveness when he participates in Ikemefuna's killing. Ezeudu has warned him not to take part, yet Okonkwo strikes because he fears appearing weak. The narrator gives readers access to this motive, separating the outward action from the inward fear that drives it. His violence is therefore not simply an expression of communal authority: Okonkwo's personal need to demonstrate strength exceeds the role he has been advised to accept. Here, the difference in form sharpens the comparison. Shakespeare makes the failure of violent authority publicly visible by disrupting the ceremony and contrasting Macbeth's perception with his guests' understanding. Achebe, by contrast, lets readers recognize a compromised motive concealed by the outward action. In both works, violence fails to establish self-sufficient power because the violent man remains governed by the judgment he imagines others will make.

Evidence becomes analysis through explanation

The banquet and Ikemefuna's killing are not included just because both involve violence. Each tests the same claim: an outward display of strength exposes dependence on recognition.

Rather than stopping at events, the paragraph examines authorial choices. Shakespeare places a private disturbance inside a public ceremony, giving characters different access to what is happening. Achebe reveals a motive that contradicts the appearance of confidence. These explanations address Criterion B1 by showing how choices shape meaning, rather than simply identifying techniques.

The comparative pivot does more than announce a similarity. It establishes a shared problem, then distinguishes how drama and prose fiction make that problem available to an audience or reader. This develops the comparative analysis assessed under Criterion B2.

Avoid parallel description

Putting two accounts next to each other doesn't automatically create a comparison. Say only that both protagonists are violent, and the central work remains undone: what does the violence reveal, and how does each writer make it reveal that?

Choose a moment from each work and identify the relevant authorial choice. Then complete the comparison with a judgment: what becomes clearer when you read the moments together?

Develop the argument rather than repeat it

A later comparative point should do more than repeat what came before: it should change the scale, test a qualification or reveal a consequence. The first model paragraph examined the protagonists' insecurity. The next turns to the endings and asks what they suggest about the authority that survives them.

The relationship diagram below traces that development: Personal insecurity → Public recognition → Authority after the protagonist's death. From there, it separates Political restoration in Macbeth from Colonial control of representation in Things Fall Apart. The contrasting outcomes develop the thesis; they don't introduce a new subject.

Model comparative analysis: who controls the ending?

Both endings extend the concern with recognition. They differ, though, over whether violence can establish an alternative to failed authority. Shakespeare places Macbeth's defeat within a public transfer of allegiance: Macduff enters with Macbeth's severed head, turning the former king's body into visible evidence that his rule has ended. Malcolm's announcements then replace Macbeth's isolated commands with promises of collective repair, including the return of exiles and the recognition of supporters. But the juxtaposition matters. The new political settlement is announced beside a trophy of violence. Shakespeare distinguishes the defeat of a tyrant from the tyrant's self-protective murders, yet does not allow restored authority to appear wholly separate from force. No comparable communal restoration follows Okonkwo's final act of violence in Achebe's novel. He kills the court messenger, but the other men do not join him. His action exposes his loss of influence rather than reversing it. After his suicide, the novel shifts to the District Commissioner's plans to incorporate his story into a colonial book. That final change of perspective makes authority a matter of representation as well as physical coercion. Readers have encountered the complexity of Okonkwo's life and can recognize how drastically the Commissioner's projected account will reduce it. Shakespeare gives the ending's public declarations to the incoming ruler; Achebe lets the colonial official's concluding perspective reveal its own inadequacy. In both endings, violence supports the authority that survives. Its implications differ: Macbeth offers a qualified prospect of legitimate government, while Things Fall Apart exposes a power that controls events and also seeks to control their meaning.

Evaluate the significance of choices

To evaluate a choice is to judge its significance for the work's meaning. The severed head, for instance, complicates the apparent restoration of order. The final shift to the Commissioner reveals a gap between possessing power and understanding the people subjected to it. Neither judgment needs an unsupported claim that a technique is effective.

You can also use broader authorial choices as evidence. An ending or the allocation of the final perspective can sustain analysis just as individual words can. So can the arrangement of events and the treatment of a protagonist's death. Criterion B1 rewards the quality of the explanation, not how many devices you name.

This paragraph develops a difference without forcing an equal number of similarities and differences. Criterion B2 concerns the depth of the relationship established between the works, not a numerical balance between kinds of comparison.

Keep the treatment balanced

Both works must contribute substantially to the argument for the treatment to be balanced. They don't need identical sentence counts. Here, each ending receives detailed reference, analysis of choices and an interpretive judgment. The final comparison depends on both.

Begin the next stage of your argument with a consequence or complication of the previous stage. Then select evidence from both works that makes that development necessary.

Resolve the comparison

A conclusion gives the final answer your analysis makes possible. Don't just repeat paragraph topics or bring in a scene you haven't examined. Return to the question and make a more precise judgment than you could establish in the introduction.

The diagram below traces that movement: Findings from both works → Decisive relationship → Answer to the question. The decisive relationship is what we learn by comparing the works, rather than the simple fact that they share a subject.

Model conclusion

Both Shakespeare and Achebe challenge the assumption that the capacity to inflict violence is enough to command authority. Macbeth's disrupted banquet and Okonkwo's fear-driven participation in Ikemefuna's killing expose strength as a performance that depends on recognition. Yet their endings draw a distinction between the destruction of an individual's authority and the survival of violence within a wider system. Shakespeare offers political repair but keeps a visible reminder of its forceful foundation. Achebe reveals how colonial authority extends from coercion to the reduction of another person's story. Read together, the works suggest that authority depends on who can act violently, who can secure recognition and who can determine how violence is understood.

Why this is synthesis

The conclusion brings together the essay's two stages: the insecurity of the individual and the power of the surviving system. In the final sentence, a relationship established by both works provides the answer to the question. The conclusion neither treats the endings as equivalent nor claims that one writer simply approves of violence while the other rejects it.

Across the essay, this approach sustains the interpretation required by Criterion A. It also supports the analysis and comparison required by B1 and B2, alongside the connected development required by C. The language serves Criterion D too: precise verbs such as exposes, distinguishes and reduces explain relationships without inflated phrasing. Formal writing should make the argument easier to follow, not harder.

Write a final judgment that relies on your analysis of both works. Explain why their similarity or difference changes the answer to the question.