Please suggest a topic sentence for a compare and contrast essay on "Battle Royal" (Ralph Ellison) and "Sonny's Blues" (James Baldwin).

A compare
and contrast topic sentence for these two stories might look at a theme the two stories share
(comparison) and then make a claim about how this theme is handled differently in each story
(contrast).

Two themes are fairly prominent in each story, but they are
handled differently. The first theme is that of identity. Both main characters are young men who
are trying to figure out who they are despite very strong influences around them. The contrast
here, of course, is that the influences are quite different, even if they have some of the same
effects. The narrator in "Sonny's Blues" is influenced by his parents and their lack
of support for his brother, and he is influenced by his brother, Sonny. The narrator in "
" is influenced also by familynamely the memory of his dead grandfatherand also by the
prominent white men in his town who arrange the boxing match. It is also worth noting that the
narrator in each story is nameless, further emphasizing this idea that...