Contrast as Complication
Contrast makes a text harder, on purpose
- Contrasts often represent contradictions or inconsistencies that introduce nuance, ambiguity or contradiction into a text.
- As a result, contrasts make texts more complex.
- So the CED treats added difficulty as the point of a contrast, not as a side effect.
Select all the things a contrast can introduce, per the CED.
Resolution is the opposite of what a contrast does.
Three different products
- Nuance: the reading is finer than it was, but still one reading.
- Ambiguity: two readings are available and the text does not choose.
- Contradiction: two readings are available and they cannot both hold.
Contrasts make texts more complex, and that is the point.
The CED treats added difficulty as the purpose, not a side effect.
Say which one this contrast produced
- The three are ranked by how much they unsettle the text, and naming the right one is the analysis.
- This contrast adds complexity is true of every contrast and therefore says nothing.
- This contrast leaves two readings the novel never reconciles names an ambiguity and can be evidenced.
Nuance, ambiguity, or contradiction?
Sort each result by how far it unsettles the text.
When a text sustains a contradiction, the best essay...
Tidying a genuine ambiguity removes the thing worth writing about.
Do not resolve a contradiction the text sustains. The CED says contrasts make texts more complex, and an essay that tidies a genuine ambiguity into one reading has removed the thing worth writing about. Show the text declining to choose.
"This contrast adds complexity" is true of every contrast, so name ____ of the three it produced.
Nuance, ambiguity, and contradiction unsettle the text by different amounts.
Complexity is rewarded, not penalised
- Students often try to resolve every contradiction they find, as if a tidy reading scored better.
- The CED says contrasts make texts more complex — that is a description of good writing, not a flaw to fix.
- An essay that shows a contradiction the text sustains is doing exactly what the rubric rewards.
Match each result to what the reader is left with.
Naming the right one is the analysis; saying "complexity" is not.
A complication pass
- Name the contrast, and the contradiction or inconsistency it represents.
- Decide whether the result is nuance, ambiguity or contradiction.
- Then quote the place where the text declines to resolve it — that refusal is your best evidence.
The brother is generous with strangers and hard with his family. A tidy essay chooses one as the real man. A better essay shows that the novel puts both in the same chapter, gives neither the last word, and thereby leaves the reader unable to settle what generosity is worth.
Contrasts represent contradictions or inconsistencies that introduce nuance, ambiguity or contradiction — and thereby make texts more complex. Name which of the three this contrast produced, and quote the place where the text declines to resolve it. Complexity is rewarded, not a flaw to tidy.