Summer reading assignment... help please?

Question

I read both books I needed to read. Now, I need to do the assignment >.<

"After reading both novels, write a 5 paragraph essay, regarding the following common theme: Survival"

There are more themes, but I'm doing survival. Well, my problem is that there are no details. How am I supposed to write the essay? Explaining "how" survival is important?... "how" they survived?... "why" do they need to survive?... etc...

I don't understand what to do, because there are no clues. The only clue is "regarding". Now, what would regarding mean??

Help please!

Answer 1

Regarding means &quot;pertaining to&quot;

So any of your ideas would be fine. Try to talk about the different aspects of survival.

Suggestion:

Paragragh 1: Introduction (topic sentence, thesis, etc..)

Paragraph 2: How they managed to survive in first book/at what cost

Paragraph 3: How they managed to survive in second book/ at what cost

Paragraph 4: Compare both books

Paragraph 5: conclusion (restate thesis ect..)

Answer 2

David:  The way to do a comparison/contrast essay is evaluate how each story pertains to the theme you are looking at.  In your case, survival is the theme, so now you look at how characters in each story survived whatever they encountered in the story.  Another way to look at it is how the story in general dealt with the characters&#039; survival.  Now I will give an example of each using the book &quot;Alive&quot; by Piers Paul Read.  

The story of &quot;Alive&quot;, by Piers Paul Read, tells how 16 people survived more than 10 weeks on a mountain by eating the flesh of those who had died.  

-or-

The story of &quot;Alive&quot;, by Piers Paul Read, is a story about survival in very difficult conditions.

Your essay would then examine how the characters deal with issues or how the author treats those issues in each story.  Discuss how you as a reader responded to the way the people handled the issues or the way the author chose to portray them in each story.  You are comparing them to see which way was more effective or contrasting them to discuss which way was handled better from your perspective as a reader.  

You can email me if you have other questions.  If you want to tell me more specifically which books you read and what you thought of each I can make suggestions specific to your assignment instead of the more general examples I gave you here.  Best of luck to you!

Answer 3

First of all, &quot;regarding&quot; means, in basic terms, &#039;relating to&#039; =

Now, I don&#039;t know what books you&#039;ve read, but it doesn&#039;t matter. I bet that in each and every one of them, some place, some event, some person or thing has survived SOMETHING. It doesn&#039;t necessarliy have to be surviving anything concrete or tangible (if you don&#039;t know these words, use your dictionary).

Ask yourself these questions:

What or who do I think is an important part of the story being told, and relevant to the outcome of the book?

What does this person, place or thing survive, get through or overcome in this story? A lost love, a fire, an illness, a challenge at work or school, a cruel person, a personal battle? Those are only a very small example of the things that can be survived - think of more.

You can focus your essay on how one person, place or thing (or idea, even) survived something in the story, or how a whole group of people, places, things or ideas survived something.

I hope this helped. I&#039;m interested to hear what you find..