The Paper from Hades

On Sunday, my Children's Literature instructor posted the directions for our second paper of the semester.  Sounds simple, yes?  Here's the original question.

Compare how another version of a book we have read could lead the reader to interpret the story differently.  For example:  How does the book version of The Wizard of Oz differ from the movie version, and how would a reader interpret the story differently?

This seems like a simple enough question.  I then proceeded to make it much harder than it should be.  The rest of my class is writing about the above Wizard of Oz book/movie comparison.  I chose, instead, to compare the political implications of The Wizard of Oz with the political implications of Wicked. 

It's not going well.  I'm supposed to be focusing on a small set of differences that leads to a different interpretation.  However, what I chose IS the different interpretation, NOT a version of the same story.  There are so many differences that I am overwhelmed.

Yesterday, I had my required chat with three of my classmates to discuss our working theses and help one another out.  I was having trouble with writing my initial thesis and decided to wait to see what my classmates had to say about it and if their insights could help me.  I explained my thesis to this response.  "We've never read Wicked."  GAH!  No help at all.  I sat in silence for hours, finally writing something that I thought was brilliant.  I posted it in my forums for my classmates to review.  They gave me rave reviews on my interesting thesis and thoughts that they couldn't wait to read the paper.  I started writing and got about halfway done with the paper.

My teacher graded my working thesis and told me it sucked.  Start over.  I'm on the wrong track.  *sigh*  Back to square one.  I may go insane.