I returned Joshua's comparative essay on the novels,"A Farewell to Arms" and "The Things They Carried and reviewed my comments on style, substance, and thesis. I provided instruction to clarify some of Joshua's misunderstanding about both novels and then provided a model for a broad themed first sentence .From there, I explained how to contextualize the essay introduction from this first "model" sentence to a final topic sentence that directly answers the essay prompt. I further discussed how to organize the remainder of the essay and pointed out passages in both books and from the draft that could be used to support statements about style, and tone.