Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [107]
You can determine which comparison is key by ranking—designating one part of your topic as especially important or revealing. Suppose you are asked to compare General David Petraeus’s strategy in the current Afghanistan conflict with General Douglas MacArthur’s strategy in World War II. As a first move, you could limit the comparison to some revealing parallel, such as the way each man dealt with the media, and then argue for its significance above other similarities or differences. You might, for instance, claim that in their treatment of the media, we get an especially clear or telling vantage point on the two generals’ strategies. At this point, you are on your way to an analytical point—for example, that because MacArthur was more effectively shielded from the media at a time when the media was a virtual instrument of propaganda, he could make choices that Petraeus might have wanted to make but could not.
Strategy 2: Use one side of the comparison to illuminate the other. Usually, it is not necessary to treat each part of the comparison equally. It’s a common misconception that each side must be given equal space. In fact, the purpose of your comparison governs the amount of space you’ll need to give to each part. Often, you will use one side of the comparison primarily to illuminate the other. For example, in a course on contemporary military policy, the ratio between the two parts would probably be roughly 70 percent on Petraeus to 30 percent on MacArthur rather than 50 percent on each.
Strategy 3: Imagine how one side of your comparison might respond to the other. This strategy, a variant of the preceding one, is a particularly useful way of helping you to respond to comparison/contrast topics more purposefully. This strategy can be adapted to a wide variety of subjects. If you were asked to compare Sigmund Freud with one of his most important followers, Jacques Lacan, you would probably be better off focusing the broad question of how Lacan revises Freud by considering how and why he might critique Freud’s interpretation of a particular dream in The Interpretation of Dreams. Similarly, in the case of the Afghanistan example, you could ask yourself how MacArthur might have handled some key decision in dealing with Kabul and why. Or you might consider how he would have critiqued Petraeus’s decisions and why.
Strategy 4: Focus on difference within similarity (or similarity within difference). The typical move when you are asked to compare two subjects is to collect a number of parallel examples and show how they are parallel, which can lead to bland tallying of similarities without much analytical edge. In the case of obvious similarities, you should move quickly to significant differences within the similarity and the implications of these differences. In this way, you will better define your subject, and you will be more likely to offer your readers something that is not already clear to them. For example, the Carolingian and Burgundian Renaissances share an emphasis on education, but if you were asked to compare them, you could reveal the character of these two historical periods more effectively by concentrating on the different purposes and origins of this emphasis on education. (Here we are reprising the final heuristic presented in Chapter 4, Toolbox II.)
A corollary of the difference-within-similarity formula is that you can focus on unexpected similarity rather than obvious difference. So, for example, we would probably expect that, given the vast differences in terrain and in government between Iraq and Afghanistan, significant differences would exist in the United States’ military campaigns in these two locales. But as David Petraeus used to command forces in Iraq and now does so in Afghanistan, we might productively look for some revealing