Evaluating “The Bear Came Over the Mountain” and “Away from Her”: A Comparative Analysis

 

write an evaluative essay comparing two media. You’ll use the short story “The bear came over the mountain” (Munro, 2013) and the film Away from Her (Egoyan et al., 2006). You will begin working on this assignment with reading, viewing, drafting.
For this essay, the short story is the source material. You are going to evaluate how well the film stands up to the short story. First, you must establish the criteria. What makes the short story successful? You want to think about this very carefully as you read and make notes. Notice elements of plot, structure, character, and point of view. You’ll write about these in the first section of your paper.
This essay should:
• have specific criteria, using the short story as source material
• use that criterion to make judgments about the film
• support the judgment with evidence from the text and film
• be 1000 words long
• have an explicit thesis statement, with the main idea (the topic of the paper) and a controlling idea (what you, as the author, is saying about the topic)
o In this case, we’re making a judgment, and that should be included in the thesis. Remember — this judgment is not about the film or text is good or bad. It’s about whether or not the film lives up to the criteria established in the short story.
• include an integrated, direct quote from the text/film to support the thesis in each of the body paragraphs