What is the purpose of comparison and contrast essay?

What do we know about the mother in “two kinds”? select all that apply. she came from china. she had two daughters who died. her mother, father, and first husband are dead. she is part japanese.

The following question refers to “the philosophy of composition” by edgar allan poe and on writing by stephen king. what is a key difference in the use of details in the texts? poe’s essay is dominated by facts, while king’s memoir is dominated by images and examples. poe references numerous authors and literary works, while king does not reference any other authors or literary works. poe includes a list of all the poems he has written, while king includes a list of all the books he has written. poe’s essay is full of personal details about his wife and children, while king’s memoir is filled with details about his pets.

[1] nothing that comes from the desert expresses its extremes better than the unhappy growth of the tree yuccas. tormented, thin forests of it stalk drearily in the high mesas, particularly in that triangular slip that fans out eastward from the meeting of the sierras and coastwise hills. the yucca bristles with bayonet-pointed leaves, dull green, growing shaggy with age like an old [5] man's tangled gray beard, tipped with panicles of foul, greenish blooms. after its death, which is slow, the ghostly hollow network of its woody skeleton, with hardly power to rot, makes even the moonlight fearful. but it isn't always this way. before the yucca has come to flower, while yet its bloom is a luxurious, creamy, cone-shaped bud of the size of a small cabbage, full of sugary sap. the indians twist it deftly out of its fence of daggers and roast the prize for their [10] own delectation why does the author use the words "bayonet-pointed" (line 4) and "fence of daggers" (line 9) to describe the leaves of the yucca tree? . to create an image of the sharp edges of the plant to emphasize how beautiful the plant's leaves are to explain when and where the plant grows to show how afraid the author is of the plant