Hello, I need to write a compare and contrast essay, and therefore, I need you to help me please find in these 2 short passages the following things (see pdf file below): a. Some similarities and differences between the passages. b. Some literary devices/techniques in passage 2 (like metaphor, theme, symbolism, irony, and so on). c. Why it is meaningful to compare and contrast these two passages (conveying the main idea)? http://www.nysedregents.org/ComprehensiveEnglish/Archive/20100127exam.pdf Thank you very, very much!

The materials in the PDF are photocopies of part of a 2010 New York Regents Examination. Practicing with such past exams is a useful way of studying for future exams. As this sort of writing is timed, a key strategy is to find clear and simple points that can be made and supported with obvious textual evidence. Making an outline and then filling it in is a good strategy for such exams, both as a way of making sure every major point is covered and ensuring that enough time is allocated for each section.
Although one piece is prose and one is poetry, both are reflections in which an adult narrator looks back on the loss of innocence of youth as children transition from early childhood to adolescence. The differences between these two ages are so radical that the children in both poems nearly consider their new selves to be different (and less magical) people than their younger selves. Although the poem is set entirely in a single location, a house in what appears to be a North American suburb, and the prose piece describes an Italian boy in Britain, the central issue in both is age and how as the children get a clearer understanding of adult reality they lose a sense of magic. The reason it makes sense to compare these passages is the similarities of the narrators and themes.
A compare and contrast essay should be clearly organized around themes. For example, one could write one paragraph with each about the following:
Narrators (both young boys)
Setting (home versus abroad)
Genre (prose versus poetry)
Important objects (cake, bicycle, and so on)
For literary devices, it is interesting that the poem begins with a simile, while the prose piece relies more on metaphor. Next, you might consider how information that adults would consider to be metaphors, such as a child being an Arabian wizard, might be literally true for a child. Thus, you might conclude with thinking about how the literary devices created by adults are the realities of imaginative children like the ones in these works.
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html