EN 101: Writing: Logic and Rhetoric

Assignment Three: Compare and Contrast

Assignment Three: Compare and Contrast
Read the following texts.
Text One:
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science. Trans. Josefine Nauckhoff. Ed. Bernard Williams.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001. Print.
The things people call love.Greed and love: such different feelings these terms evoke! And yet
it could be the same instinct, named twice: once disparaged by those who already have, in whom
the instinct has somewhat calmed down and who now fear for what they have; the other time
seen from the standpoint of the unsatisfied, the thirsty, and therefore glorified as good. Our
love of our neighborsis it not a craving for new property? And likewise our love of
knowledge, of truth, and altogether any craving for what is new? We slowly grow tired of the
old, of what we safely possess, and we stretch out our hands again; even the most beautiful
landscape is no longer sure of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some
more distant coast excites our greed: possession usually diminishes the possession. The pleasure
we take in ourselves tries to preserve itself by time and again changing something new into
ourselvesthat is simply what possession means. To grow tired of a possession is to grow
tired of ourselves. (One can also suffer from an excesseven the desire to throw away, to dole
out, can take on the honorary name love.) When we see someone suffering, we like to use this
opportunity to take possession of him; that is for example what those who become his
benefactors and those who have compassion for him do, and they call the lust for new
possessions that is awakened in them love; and their delight is like that aroused by the prospect
of a new conquest. Sexual love, however, is what most clearly reveals itself as a craving for new
property: the lover wants unconditional and sole possession of the longed-for person; he wants a
power over her soul as unconditional as his power over her body; he wants to be the only
beloved, to live and to rule in the other soul as that which is supreme and most desirable. If one
considers that this means excluding the whole world from a precious good, from joy and
enjoyment; if one considers that the lover aims at the impoverishment and deprivation of all the
competitors and would like to become the dragon guarding his golden hoard as the most
inconsiderate and selfish of all conquerors and exploiters; if one considers, finally, that to the
lover himself the rest of the world appears indifferent, pale, and worthless and that he is
prepared to make any sacrifice, upset any order, subordinate any other interest; then one is
indeed amazed that this wild greed and injustice of sexual love has been as glorified and deified
as it has in all agesyes, that this love has furnished the concept of love as the opposite of
egoism when it may in fact be the most candid expression of egoism. Here is it evidently the
have-nots and the yearning ones who have formed linguistic usagethere have probably always
been too many of them. Those who were granted much possession and satiety in this area must
occasionally have made some casual remark about the raging demon, as did that most
charming and beloved of all Athenians, Sophocles: but Eros always laughed at such
blasphemers; they were always his greatest darlings. Here and there on earth there is probably a
kind of continuation of love in which this greedy desire of two people for each other gives way
to a new desire and greed, a shared higher thirst for an ideal above them. But who knows such
love? Who has experienced it? Its true name is friendship.

EN 101: Writing: Logic and Rhetoric

Assignment Three: Compare and Contrast
Text Two:
SONNET 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
William Shakespeare
Part One: Nietzsche compares love and greed in text one. Select a subject and describe or
define it by comparing it to another thing. Imitate Nietzsches style and comparison techniques.
(It does not have to be quite as long as Nietzsches text).
Part Two: Shakespeare compares love to several things in order to say what it is. Pick one of
your two things from the first part and write this part imitating Shakespeares technique of
comparison (you do not have to write it as a poemjust look at how he is using comparison).
Part Three: Compare and contrast your first two parts and reflect upon the various uses,
benefits, and shortcomings of comparison and contrast. What is it good for? What can the
dangers be?
*Style: Personification is when we take an inanimate object or abstract concept and turn it into a
person. Shakespeare makes love a person who can do things such as alter or bear. Also,
Time is a personification. Nietzsche does this too when he talks about Eroswhich makes
love into a god who has darlings. Personification can make your writing more interesting as it
turns a concept into a character, which can allow you to make interesting metaphors and images.
Try using personification in your first two paragraphs. Bold these examples.
*Grammar: Phrases (The Bedford Handbook, 9th ed., pages 499-505) Highlight in bold one
example of each form of phrase (noun, prepositional, verbal in your paper. Footnote each
example to explain what role it is playing in the sentence. You should pay attention to how
Nietzsche uses phrases and model your examples on his.
DUE: In Class THURSDAY, September 24