Compare And Contrast Popocatepetl And Tenochtitl

“Tenochtitlan: Inside the Aztec Capital” and “Popocatepetl and Ixtlaccihuatl” are both passages that have to do with the Aztec Capital of Tenochtitlan. However, they deliver very different messages. “Tenochtitlan: Inside the Aztec Capital” explains the beginnings and life style in Tenochtitlan, but “Popocatepetl and Ixtlaccihuatl” tries to explain why there are two volcanoes around what is now Mexico City.

“Popocatepetl and Ixtlaccihuatl” begins with backstory on the city. Once the actual story starts, it talks about how the emperor just had a new baby girl named Ixtlaccihuatl. It briefly covers the girl’s childhood, but the main story begins when she starts to mature. She realizes the responsibilities she has to deal with when her father,

the emperor, dies. She ends up becoming more studious than playful like she used to be. She also falls in love with a soldier name Popocatepetl. Her father, however, doesn’t allow her to be married because he thinks it will distract her when she becomes empress.
The emperor starts training her instead of ruling his empire.

Because of this, his enemies realize that the empire is weak, and they attack him. He proclaims that the most successful soldier in the war would receive his daughters hand in marriage. Popocatepetl wins the competition, but jealous soldiers tell the emperor that Popo is dead. This causes Ixtla to die of heartbreak. When Popo returns, he kills the jealous soldiers and builds two stone piles. One made for Ixtla’s grave, and one made for him to watch over her for eternity. The story intention is to explain the existence of the volcanoes Ixtlaccihuatl and Popocatepetl. Although “Tenochtitlan: Inside the Aztec Capital” does not explain the volcanoes, it does, however, explain how the city itself was

created.
“Tenochtitlan: Inside the Aztec Capital” is a summary about the city that used to stand where Mexico City stands today. According to the passage, the architecture differed between the rich and the poor. If you were rich, your house would have a house with four or five large rooms that are built around a courtyard that have gardens inside them. The poor people’s houses were not well documented, but historians think that they were made with reeds plastered together with mud. The city was built around a lake known as Texcoco. Due to this, most of the city was built on floating platforms.
The defenses of the city were quite intelligent.

The floating pathways that are used for transport around the city had gaps between them with narrow, modular bridges to connect them. On the surface it seems like it was due to bad design, but when you start to think about, it makes more sense. They can remove the bridges making it harder for enemies to traverse the city. It is still possible to attack the city, but they have to cross the bridges in small groups which are easier to deal with than an entire army at once. The one thing the passage leaves out is the volcanoes that “Popocatepetl and Ixtlaccihuatl” tries to

explain.
The passages have both similarities and differences. For one, both are based in/about Tenochtitlan. “Popocatepetl and Ixtlaccihuatl” are about the origins of the volcanoes around the city, but “Tenochtitlan: Inside the Aztec Capital” is about the inner workings of the city. The writers and readers purpose seem like they would differ with each other, but when you think about it, you realize that they are the same purpose. For “Popocatepetl and Ixtlaccihuatl”, the purpose is to educate the reader on how the volcanoes were created. The purpose for “Tenochtitlan: Inside the Aztec Capital” is to educate the reader on how the city came to be. The genre is where the stories differ. While the former’s genre is clearly folktale, the latter’s genre is non-fiction.
In conclusion, the stories are more similar than they are different. They both explain something about how parts of Tenochtitlan was made. Even though “Popocatepetl and Ixtlaccihuatl” is clearly fiction, it still tries to explain something. Even though the two stories have different writing styles, different messages, and different truthfulness, they carry the same purpose. That shared purpose is to explain Tenochtitlan, a city that is not well known by people today.