Help with getting an essay going in the right direction

GreasyKidsStuff

I'm not sure how much help I'm looking for, but I'm kinda hitting my head against the wall with starting an essay in my uni Intro to Fiction class. Here's the assignment.

Both Frankenstein and Green Grass Running Water are novels of social commentary. Write a comparison style essay that looks at how and why the novels were written. This is a broad topic so you will need to narrow your thesis. You will also need to do research and all rules of MLA citation must be followed

I know to some people this is gonna seem like a really easy topic to tackle, but I'm not too sure. From what I know, in terms of how the two stories were written, it's like this:

Frankenstein: Frame narrative. It's like, 4 stories within a story. Starts with a character writing letters to someone, and in those letters he tells the story of Frankenstein, who tells the story of the monster, and so on and so forth.

Green Grass Running Water: This novel is bizarre. From what I understand, the story pokes fun at the oral and written traditions of telling stories. It flips between two contrasting stories, one about native creation myths, told through a spirit coyote and an unnamed narrator, and the other about these four characters and their struggles. I know that's a terrible summary, but I'm hoping somebody has read it and can lend a hand.

Frankenstein's horribly bleak and dark, Green Grass is more of a humorous comedy / satire. I found a few articles in the school database that talk about how Green Grass is written, so that kinda helps. I'm just not sure how I'm gonna narrow this into a thesis I can talk about. Aaaaaaaaaahh!

Elin

Step one: real both novels. The assignment will most likely be more clear after you've read the subject matter it pertains to. I'm really not trying to be an ass about it, but if you haven't read the books the help you do get probably won't make a hell of a lot of sense.

GreasyKidsStuff

I didn't realize I needed to specify that I've read both novels already.

Tastyfish

The direction to take seems fairly obvious to me - Frankenstein is literally written in the style of a story being passed on orally, unfortunately my knowledge of english literiture is generally second hand but it does seem that this is pretty common in a lot of older stories before the ideal of a novel (particularly a fantasy novel where the things described obviously didn't happen, so having the story presented being a story presented to someone else adds a sense of authority or at least 'hey don't take it up with me - just telling you what I heard').

The second is directly critising the style of the first, and how its using older pre-novel means of telling stories (true/exagerrated or not) to try to hide the fact its clearly a work of fiction despite trying to be otherwise.

GreasyKidsStuff

Yeah, this is exactly what I'm thinking. I just need to figure out how to flesh that out into a five page essay.

Hahnsoo1

Both stories have alien creatures with some connection to humanity, and each alien creature personifies the social conflict framed by the stories. Start there, perhaps? Frankenstein is a personification of the dangers of irresponsible science (Jurassic Park) and Coyote is the personification of a dying culture and nation, pushed back and alienated by the "white man". It is writing from an alien perspective to emphasize the alienation of each social conflict.

EDIT: I thought the question for the essay doesn't deal with the METHOD of writing, but the reasons for writing each novel as a social commentary. If this is the case, you'd get less content and value discussing the differences in oral/written tradition than you would from discussing how each story frames the social conflict.

EDIT 2: By "comparison style essay" are you meant to compare and contrast (which means finding similarities AND differences) or simply compare (finding similarities) the two works? That's an important question to consider, I think.

GreasyKidsStuff

Yeah, it kind of says look at not just the 'how', but the 'why'. So I'm gonna need to look at both.

EDIT: I think I can write a bit on the how for sure, and compare the two that way. But getting to that next level of the 'why' is gonna be the tough part I think.

EDIT 2: I'll have to ask the professor that tomorrow, I'm not 100% sure.