Final answer:
A narrative essay is most like a short story, as it shares elements such as character development, plot, and literary devices to tell a personal or biographical story.
Step-by-step explanation:
Narrative Essay Comparison.A narrative essay is most similar to a short story. Narrative essays share many elements with short stories, including a focus on a sequence of events, the development of characters, and the presence of a plot, conflict, and resolution. Like short stories, narrative essays often employ descriptive imagery, setting, and literary devices. In contrast, an instruction manual would offer procedural information without these storytelling elements; a research article would present scholarly analysis and findings; and a poetry anthology would be a collection of poems with varying forms and themes. The narrative essay uses these storytelling techniques to convey personal experiences or biographical stories, often to express how these experiences have shaped the writer's personal growth. Characteristics of a Narrative Essay.Narrative essays may be autobiographical, focusing on the writer's own experiences, or biographical, telling the story of someone else's life. Typically written in the first person, narrative essays allow writers to delve deeply into personal thoughts, desires, and motivations, especially in the case of autobiographical narratives. This form of writing provides an opportunity for writers to reflect on and share their lived experiences in a creative and literary way.