Comparative Essay Sample: A Blessing and Predators

“A Blessing” and “Predators” have many similarities and differences between the animals, the speaker’s feelings, the title, and the conclusions made. I, will present and explain to you the differences and similarities between these subjects. It will be explained in great depth and detail. Both poems also have many details in which we can discover new things.

Firstly, let us compare and contrast the animals. Now, the animals in both poems are very different, but at the same time hide emotions that are also very similar. Let’s take a look at each animal separately. The Indian ponies in “A Blessing” are very welcoming to the speaker and her friends. They are respectful yet shy and are nicely excited to see them. The foxes, while a bit more violent at the end, do bow respectfully yet shyly to the cat and her dog friends, and while not excited to see them still coexist in the same area peacefully. The dogs are domesticated, and as such are surprised to see the vixens’ violent acts of nature. We can see a trend here: the animals in “A Blessing” are shy yet respectful and also welcoming, and the fox is shy yet respectful, while also coexisting peacefully. All animals in both poems are reacting similarly to the situations they are put in, especially when near the speaker. However, there are differences as well. The animals in “A Blessing” are much more human-friendly and calm, whilst the fox just bows to acknowledge them and the vixens are violent to eat a small feline. 

Second up is the speaker’s feelings. The speaker’s feelings are easier to reveal, as the speaker is the main character in both poems.  Both humans in both poems have a slight connection to the animals and slightly understand their feelings. In “A Blessing”, the speaker is calm yet relaxed to be around the ponies, whilst also retaining a feeling of curiosity, while in “Predators” the speaker is curious about the different acts of nature, yet is calm and relaxed to be outside with her feline friend. In “A Blessing”, the main speaker can connect, silently communicate with the ponies if you will, as we can see the main speaker describe the ponies’ feelings in slight detail. In “Predators”, the speaker can detect the dog’s sorry looks, the fox’s bowing and actions plus their causes, and the vixens’ purposes. In both poems, the speaker can connect. However, in “A Blessing”, the speaker can find more information and in-depth details about the animals’ feelings and how they affect their feelings. In “Predators”, the speaker only finds slightly general feelings about the feline, the dog friends, and the foxes. The vixens are completely left out of the findings. We can see that due to a lower animal count and higher bonding, the speaker in “A Blessing” can find the feelings and connect with the Indian ponies more than the speaker in “Predators” can find just general feelings and not connect nearly as much.

Third on the list is the title. Now, some people say not to judge a book by its cover, but you shouldn’t just disregard the cover and its title entirely. Both titles, “A Blessing” and “Predators”, say a lot about the poem, and you can see so and connect after reading both poems in their entirety. For example, in “A Blessing”, we can see that the speaker is very happy, blessed almost to be around the ponies. The ponies are excited to be around the speaker, and the speaker metaphorically blossoms in joy when around the ponies. In “Predators”, we can see the vixens acting as predators whilst eating a small mammal. The exact definition of predator is “An animal that lives by killing and eating other animals.”, and that exactly matches what the vixens are currently performing. The vixens live by killing and eating other animals, like a small mammals. While you can see many, many differences between the two titles, some similarities include that both represent something caused by animals. While the idea of animals may appear in your head faster with “Predators” than “A Blessing”, both can still be formed by animals: the killing and eating of other animals, and the happiness of coexisting with another animal, almost always with a domesticated animal.

The last idea I’m going to be discussing is the conclusions made: both poems have a clear, apparent, conclusion. In “A Blessing”, shows the joy of being with the ponies, understanding their emotions, and being so overwhelmed with excitement and happiness that the speaker metaphorically blossoms in glee. In “Predators”, it shows the danger yet overall wildness of the outside nature, and the many different things that happen between the wild, dangerous world of nature and the more civilized yet man-made and artificial world of ours, where we feel safer relative to the dangers of true nature yet at the same time at risk due to the also man-made dangers. Both conclusions are very different: one shows the joy of being with animals, and the other shows the differences between nature’s great dangers and wildness and industrial society’s supposed calmness and peacefulness when compared to the great dangers of the outside world. One thing that could bridge the two together is the fact that both feature animals in a half-decent way. Both are domesticated (the felines and dogs are more domesticated, whilst the Indian ponies are tamed, however for the sake of convenience we’ll refer to them both as domesticated) and do not understand the true dangers of the wild their non-domesticated ancestors had to suffer through. It’s also compared to the outside world: the jump over the barbed wire ould signify a transfer to the modernized yet civilized world of ours to the more peaceful, calm pastures, and there’s an imaginary divide between the domesticated dogs, cats, and humans and the vixens eating the small mammal and the foxes, which aren’t as tame, if not at all.

This concludes my essay on the differences and similarities between the two poems “A Blessing” and “Predators”. We reviewed how the animals showed similar characteristics to each other in the ways of human communication yet were different in the ways they showed said communication, the speaker’s feelings were similar in the ways they tried to “silently communicate” with the animals yet were different due to the speaker in “A Blessing” able to do so better due to the conditions, the title representing different things due to the emotions felt with both titles yet the same things when compared to animals, and the conclusions made were different as they tried to show different overall morals and feelings, yet similar when truly seen how the inner workings operate. This was my essay on those four similarities and differences, and thank you for reading.