Please give me one copy of your rough draft and keep another for peer reviews purposes

Review some thoughts on thesis statements 

Peer Reviews followed by quiet revision

October 27, 2015

Thoughts on Writing a Thesis
By Michael Barsanti, some other teachers, and me

1. Think of your thesis as a project. It might be easiest to think about this project as having two parts: the first where you say something about the work at hand (a reading), and a second where you explain what the consequences or uses of this reading are. This approach can be structured as a brief formula:

"I want to show you [something in the text] in order to say [something you should care about]."

2. Your thesis should apply specifically and exclusively to the works at hand. If your thesis could apply to several other works in addition to the one(s) you are writing about, you need to narrow it down.

The story of Kate Swift in Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio tells us that communication is important.

This thesis is so vague that you could plug in nearly any story and it would still work.

3. Your thesis must not invoke or rephrase a cliche.

The story of Louise Bentley is a perfect example of "once bitten, twice shy."

4. Your thesis must not make any kind of claim about Society, The History of Mankind, People Since the Beginning of Time, All the People of the World, Everyone Who Ever Lived, etc.
5. Your thesis must do more than express judgments about the characters in the texts. They are not human beings. They do not exist outside the text. They cannot change, no matter how much you may want them to. You may talk about them as having a psychology with motivations and feelings and the like, as long as this discussion is in service of a larger point and shows awareness that the character is a carefully constructed representation inside a carefully and deliberately constructed work.

Instead of:

The Reverend Hartman is a deeply frustrated man.

Try:

Sherwood Anderson uses descriptions of body parts, especially hands, to show that Reverend Hartman is a deeply frustrated man.

A good thesis is:

• Argumentative. It makes a case. That's the biggest difference between a thesis and a topic — a topic is something like "Slavery in Huck Finn." That's not a case, only a general area. A thesis, on the other hand, makes a specific case, it tries to prove something. One way to tell a thesis from a topic: if it doesn't have an active verb, it's almost certainly still a topic.
• Analytical, not evaluative. A college English paper isn't the place to praise or blame works of literature: theses like "Paradise Lost is an enduring expression of the human spirit" or "The Sound and the Fury isn't successful in its choice of narrative techniques" aren't appropriate. That's the business of book reviewers. No need to give thumbs-up or thumbs-down; evaluate the work on its own terms.
• Specific. It's not enough to deal in vague generalities. Some students want to write their paper on man and God, or on the black experience in the twentieth century. Both are far too nebulous to produce a good paper. Get your hands dirty with the text.
• Well supported. That's the key to the rest of the paper after those first few paragraphs.

The thesis statement should appear very close to the beginning of the paper. Some professors want it in a specific place — often the last sentence of the first paragraph. That's as good a position as any, but I prefer not to be rigidly formulaic in such matters. In any case, though, the thesis statement should be very near the beginning (in the first paragraph or two).

Jeannine DeLombard and Dan White offer this "important hint" for constructing a thesis:

You do not need a refined thesis in order to start writing. If you begin with a provisional thesis and then do good and careful close readings, you will often find a version of your final thesis in the last paragraph of a first draft. Integrate that version into your first paragraph and revise from there. Do not worry too much about your thesis, therefore, until after you've written out your close readings! A good final thesis should emerge from, not precede, your analyses.

Of course you have to know exactly what you're saying by the time you finish, but don't let that stop you from beginning to write. The fear of the blank screen — think of the old movie cliché of the would-be writer with the trashcan overflowing with crumpled paper — paralyzes too many people. Theses don't spring into being in their final form.

Some other reminders about thesis statements…

• Make sure that your thesis is an arguable point.
• Stay focused and be concise.
• Entire paper must relate back to thesis.
• Use varied and interesting word choice
• Thesis must be specific enough to give the reader a clear picture of what the essay is about.
• Sentence must flow and be understandable.
• Does my thesis pass the "So what?" test? If a reader's first response is "So what?", you need to clarify, find something meaningful to say, or connect to a larger issue.
• Does my essay support my thesis specifically and without wandering? If your thesis and the body of your essay do not seem to go together, one of them has to change. It's okay to change your working thesis to reflect things you have figured out in the course of writing your paper. Remember, always reassess and revise your writing as necessary.

Remember some thesis structures available to you:

Through its contrasting river and shore scenes, Twain's Huckleberry Finn suggests that to find the true expression of American democratic ideals, one must leave "civilized" society and go back to nature.

Through one girl’s hatred and another’s desire, Johnson explores the human need for love and the affect the absence of love can have on a person.

Although Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited” is set in Paris during the Great

Depression and Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” takes place in the South during the 1920’s, both stories weave back and forth in time through retrospection and flashback.

Although Jane does not condemn Blanch Ingram, Rochester, and the rest of the party individually, she disapproves of the principles of the upper class as a whole.

While both Northerners and Southerners believed they fought against tyranny and oppression, Northerners focused on the oppression of slaves while Southerners defended their own right to self-government.

In The Tide Turned, O’Brien’s tale of love between a father and his son illustrates the theme of optimism; even in utter desolation, there is still hope enough for one’s posterity to lead a decent life.