The Thesis Statement
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The thesis statement is the single most important aspect of your paper; it is, essentially, the justification for its very existence. A good thesis sentence should contain:
1. Your basic argument
2. The blueprint for the organization of your supporting details Developing the Argument
Topic versus statement - At the outset of your brainstorming, you will likely first decide on a topic for your paper; namely, the particular subject you plan to address in response to the assignment (in some cases, the assignment will already include a specific topic).
Your job in formulating a thesis is to find a specific statement to make about that topic.
Examples of Topics: "Natural Imagery in Wordsworth and Coleridge"; "Plato's Treatment of Gender Roles in The Republic ."
Examples of Statements: "In The Prelude , Wordsworth uses natural imagery to reflect that an increasing awareness of humanity leads to a connection to divinity,
while in "This Limetree Bower My Prison,” Coleridge's treatment of nature serves to establish that human beings are a product of the nature around them";
"In The Republic, Plato's arguments for gender equality are characterized by sameness of role, yet still subject to a male-dominated hierarchy."
Using your sources to find your argument - Rather than making an opinion
statement (one thing is "better" than another, etc.) your argument must be pulled from textual evidence. Conversely, however, it cannot be a restatement of what your source tells you, but must be an original thought arising from some point of interest,
contradiction, or vagary within the text.
Specificity - In writing your statement, be sure to say exactly what you're arguing- do not make a broad generalization. Your reader should know from your thesis what your specific arguments are, not just roughly what they prove. Also, take into account the length you intend your paper to be. In the space of six pages, for example, you can't thoroughly discuss the effects of, say. World War II on America, but you might be able
to analyze one aspect of its impact on a specific industry or social group.
Too General: "There are many similarities between Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, but there are some differences as well."
More Specific: "Though both Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina pivot around the tension between individual liberty and societal mores, Flaubert concerns himself with the decadence of self-indulgence, while Tolstoy focuses on the notion of feminine entrapment."
Tension - Perhaps most important, make sure that your argument can be controversial.
If you set out to prove something that is a given (like "the 1960s were an era of
American cultural upheaval" or "Hamlet undergoes numerous psychological changes") your paper is not only uninteresting, but entirely pointless. When you think you've decided on a statement, see if you can make a counterargument to refute it. Your job is to show how the evidence of your sources should be interpreted in a particular light, but crucial to its being worth reading is the fact that other interpretations are possible.
The Thesis as a Blueprint
Framing your paper - In addition to stating your argument, your thesis should give an indication of the particular components thereof. Though it is not necessary for you to include the gist of each subsequent topic sentence in your thesis, it is important that the basic prongs of your over-arching idea be addressed.
Incomplete thesis: "In Moby Dick . Melville renders Ahab as a diabolical figure”
Complete thesis: "In Moby Dick , Melville renders Ahab as a diabolical figure through the contrasting Christ imagery of the Whale, omnipresent Biblical mythology, and a psychological descent analogous to the Fall."
ESSAY COMPONENTS (beyond thesis) Topic Sentences
Each body paragraph of your paper builds towards proving one particular aspect of your thesis, and each of these aspects should be crystallized into a strong topic sentence.
If your paper is quite short, these sentences might represent the main points you mentioned in the blueprint part of your thesis, but they might each be more specific aspects of one of those points, particularly if your paper is longer.
Defining your topics - First and foremost, a topic sentence is a piece of analysis, NOT summary. Think of it in a similar manner to how you thought of your thesis; in other words, an original interpretation based upon the textual evidence of your source. The first of the following examples illustrates a statement of fact, rather than an argumentative topic sentence.
Weak Topic Sentence: "Book Five of Paradise Lost concentrates on the conversation between Adam and the archangel Raphael.”
Strong Topic Sentence: "Throughout Book Five, Milton utilizes images of gardening and nourishment to convey man's maturing relationship to the divine."
Relationship of topics to thesis - Your topic statements should each provide a solid area of analysis by which your thesis is true. They should, however, be more specific than a mere restatement of part of it.
Thesis: "In Journey Through the Twelve Forests , David Haberman apprehends the Ban-Yatra pilgrimage as a realization of the god Krishna's omnipresence, through separate realizations of the journey's cyclical nature, the externalization of the divine, and the relationship between asceticism and pleasure."
Topic Sentence for Second Paragraph: "Throughout the narrative, the physical relationship of the pilgrim to the natural landscape of Braj, as well as worshipped images of Krishna and other deities, reflects the presence of Krishna as an interactive externality, rather than the occupant of an inaccessible sphere."
Building Your Argument Part One: Close Readings
Close reading is a term used to describe how you ought to be using your sources. The most important element of close reading is questioning; it is imperative that you actively engage the text in order to develop your own ideas to use as arguments.
If at all possible, make your close reading your second reading of the source. If you've read it once already, you will have a basic understanding of the text, and you can focus on a more intensive questioning.
Use highlighters - Take note of any and all points of interest in the text. If you've got a thesis in mind already, use several different colors of highlighter, each for information relevant to a separate prong of your argument. This will make your life much easier when you go back to integrate your sources, particularly if you've got an extensive amount of text to cover.
Look for patterns - Be aware of recurring techniques-both literary and rhetorical-which the author uses to illustrate a concept. Specific sorts of imagery, allusion, or dialogue, which seem to be similar or related inevitably, reveal a larger intention that can be made into an argument.
Ask questions - In expository work, continually ask yourself "Is this true? What evidence supports this statement? Can other conclusions be drawn from the facts of this text?" By deciding whether or not you agree with the arguments of your source, you'll begin to crystallize more subtle arguments of your own. In literature, question the author's purpose in using particular narrative structures. "Why is this metaphor used? What does the comparison signify? Why do we learn this particular piece of information in such a manner? Why is the setting dwelled on so much in this passage? What is the relationship between setting and character?” Write these questions in the margins as you go along.
Get down to the details - One of the most sophisticated close reading techniques you can incorporate into your work is an analysis of the multiple connotations of a specific word. Be aware of every single word the author uses. When you find one of particular interest, literally look it up in the dictionary and consider how each and every definition might be applied to the text. Even if the author uses it with one literal definition in mind, see if the connotations of the other definitions can be applied to your idea (This is particularly true of Shakespeare).
Consider the source in relation to other texts - If something in the work reminds you of something else you've read, there's quite possibly a good reason why. Consider how your source is a response to or a continuation of other texts. Always be on the look out for Christ symbolism and Greek mythological allusions; both are fairly easy to spot and can be effectively analyzed in support of a particular interpretation.
An Example:
From Coleridge's Kubla Kahn: "In Xanadu did Kubla Kahn a pleasure dome decree; Where Alph the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man; into a sunless sea."
Your assignment is to write about how the poem illustrates the power of human creativity. In light of this, here are some questions to ask yourself right off the bat:
1. Why does Coleridge select an Oriental locale and a historical figure to open his work?
2. What is the significance of the word "pleasure," "measureless,"
"sunless"?
3. What is Alph, and does Coleridge use it as the setting for his poem?
Answering these questions might involve a consideration of distance, in both time and space, related to the vastness of human capacity. You might also consider "measureless" and "sunless" as descriptive of types of knowledge or ignorance; in breaching the "sunless" sea with his dome, what sort of power is Kubla Kahn exhibiting? A trip to the dictionary (or, more likely, a glance at the inevitable foot note) will provide the information that the Alph is a magical river in mythology. This begs the question, "how does a fantastic setting relate to Coleridge's view of the imagination?”
Building Your Argument Part Two: Integrating Sources
The meat and potatoes of your body paragraphs will be a mixture of textual summary and your analysis of it. Once you've done your close reading and structured your topic sentence for a paragraph, go back and pull out the details you've highlighted.
In putting these details into your paper, it is absolutely imperative that you balance each one with YOUR analysis of their significance. It might help, at least until you're used to the idea, to maintain a mental ratio:
three sentences of your interpretation for every one concrete detail of the text.
The concrete detail - Paraphrase the gist of the actual textual information as CONCISELY as possible. It is important for your reader to understand what you're talking about, but only as an illustration for your own ideas.
The interpretation - Go back to the questions you've asked yourself during the close reading. What answers have you found that you can explain here? As always, remember that good interpretation avoids both summary and opinion - your arguments must be original but crafted from actual evidence.
Example: "Coleridge opens his poem with an immediate statement of locale: ‘In Xanadu’. This fable-like invocation makes the reader immediately conscious of distance, as well as the mystical connotations of the Orient in the context of Victorian imperialism. By choosing a setting with such dual reverberations of reality and fantasy, Coleridge creates a landscape parallel to his view of the imagination - vast in breadth, yet potently accessible."
Note how very little textual detail was necessary to come up with quite a bit of interpretation.
Keep an eye on the big picture - As tempting as it is to fill space with any interesting idea you come up with, do not put a single thought onto the page that you cannot relate directly to the proving of your topic sentence.
Remember, your paper must act as the impetus for an idea, not merely a description of your sources, however subtle that description might be.
Integrating quotes - Sometimes the textual details you include will necessarily take the form of direct quotation, particularly when analyzing language. It is always best to do so as inconspicuously as possible.
The quotes should serve only to prove your ideas, not to supplant them. Rather than using big block quotations, wherever possible include only that which is specifically necessary to your point, within the framework of your own sentence.
Bad Integration: Keats describes the Grecian urn as follows: "Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness;
Thou foster child of silence and slow time; Sylvan historian who canst express; The flowery tale more sweetly than can rhyme.".
Good Integration: Keats begins by personifying the urn in terms of human innocence, as an "unravish'd bride" and a "foster child of silence and slow time".
In-text Citations
The easiest way to cite your sources throughout your paper is by using the parenthetical technique.
For a humanities paper, you include the last name of the author, and the page in which the reference was found, at the end of the sentence.
Example: "The Leviathan suggests that in a state (if nature, man looks out only for his own interests (Hobbes 56)."
Quotations
When using direct quotations less than three lines long, you may integrate them as described in the previous sections. When using a quote that is longer than three lines long, follow these guidelines:
1. Skip down two lines from the rest of your essay to begin the quote 2. Indent all lines 10 spaces from the left margin
3. Single space the quote
4. Don't put an indented block in quotation marks
5. Indicate the speaker and the context of the quote before you insert it
6. End the sentence directly before it with a colon
Building Your Argument Part Three: Strategy
Now that you've done some good analysis within your paragraphs, it's necessary to examine how they fit in to the goal of your overall paper.
Avoid Chronology - When looking at your paper as a whole, it is much better for your paragraphs to relate according to a process of thought, rather than of chronology. If it seems as though your paragraphs are divided according to the order of your source (In other words, "first this happens," then "this happens,"
then "and finally...”), there's a good chance you're lapsing into plot summary.
Ordering according to thought process - Here's where your highlighting becomes useful again. Follow each of the ideas you developed throughout the text individually. If you highlighted in different colors, make all your pink highlights one section, your blue highlights another, and your yellow ones a third. In this manner your writing flows in an ordered progression, but according to the development of an argument, rather than recapitulation of the text.
Make your paragraphs build off of each other - It's best to try to arrange your paper in a manner that grows increasingly more specific. In subsequent paragraphs, try to refer back to what you mentioned in previous ones, and explain how your current subject extends or re-examines it in a new light.
Transitions - In order to give your paper unity and flow, it's important to always make smooth transitions between paragraphs. Consider the relationship between the two paragraphs, and use it as a way of moving from one to the other. You might address a similarity in argument, by saying "In a similar manner...", "This argument may be allied to "subject B" in terms of... ", "Likewise... ", or "The idea of X recurs again with respect to... " To express a dissimilarity, you might use "In contrast...", "On the other hand... ", or "Nevertheless".
Some General Grammar and Style Tips
Vary your sentence structure - Nothing seems more unsophisticated than an uninterrupted succession of subject-verb constructions. Take a series of sentences like the following as an example: "Moby Dick can symbolize both a manifestation of God or of the ultimate evil.”. Here are just a few of the variations you can make:
Melville renders Moby Dick as simultaneously a manifestation of God and as a symbol of the ultimate evil.
That Moby Dick is subject to a dichotomy of interpretations is evident in his depiction as both a manifestation of God and of the ultimate evil.
We may intimate that Moby Dick is a juxtaposition of both the divine and the diabolical.
Combine short sentences - Try reading your paper out loud. If it seems choppy it can likely be remedied by your grouping short sentences into longer, more complex ones. For example:
"Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy has deeper implications. He becomes obsessed with escaping his own past."
This would be much stronger if combined:
"Gatsby's obsession with Daisy eventually translates into a yearning to escape his own past."
Don’t use passive voice - Plain and simple. It makes your writing weak.
Bad: "This fact was proven by Napoleon's subsequent actions."
Good: "Napoleon proved this fact through his subsequent actions." The object of the sentence should never be turned into the subject.
Maintain consistency in tense - Don't drift from the present to the past to the conditional (from "he is" to
"he was" to "he would have").
Some things to avoid wherever possible:
Starting a sentence with "there are" or "there were".
Using the phrase "this shows" (as a substitute say "evident in this fact is" or "This interpretation belies the idea that").
Using the word "quotation" when incorporating a direct quote. This makes for an awkward break from your natural thoughts, and creates an aura of self-consciousness in your writing.
Exclamation points.
The first person or second person tense. Sometimes using the first person plural (as in the previous example of "we may intimate") is generally acceptable, in that it conveys a universality that the "I" or "you" voices preclude.
Confusing commas and semi-colons. A semi-colon can be used to connect two short, related sentences into a longer one: ”Trench warfare became standard during World War One; it was used in all the major confrontations.". A comma cannot be used in this way.
Confusing "who" and "whom"; the former is a subject, the latter an object.
Broad, non-specific words like "good," "bad," "nice," "important," "vivid," and "thing". If those are the only words you can use to express what you're saying, it's likely not subtle enough to make for a very good argument.
The Conclusion
As the very last impression your reader gets of your paper, the conclusion is your opportunity to sell your argument once and for all. It's a place for reflection, for looking back at the relationship between the numerous ideas of your paper. Most importantly, however, it ought to be the site of your most complex analysis; that which incorporates everything that's gone before.
Some General Cautions
DON'T allow the conclusion to become merely a restatement of the thesis with a couple of linking sentences beforehand.
DON'T view it as merely an ornamental way to end your paper - its role should be to justify your paper at the highest level.
DO analyze how your argument has changed as your paper has progressed. If you haven't proven anything more than merely what you mentioned in your introduction, you haven't really said anything at all. Throughout the course of a good paper new subtleties of argument ought to have manifested themselves, and the place to integrate all these subtleties into a new, more powerful statement of your thesis, is right in the conclusion.
DO attempt some sort of unified closure, with respect to what you set up in the introduction. If you used one of the previously mentioned clever introductions, make reference again to the quote, questions, or anecdote you incorporated.
DO consider linking your argument to a more universal idea, analyzing its relevance with an eye on the new angle your argument proved.
Editing & Revising
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Final Steps
Read Your Paper Out Loud
To help you polish the term paper even further, read it out loud. You will be amazed at the faulty grammar and awkward language that your ears can detect. This will also give you a good sense of the flow of the piece and will alert you to anything that sounds too abrupt or out of place. Good writing, like good music, has a certain rhythm. How does your paper sound? Is it interesting and varied or drawn out and
monotonous?
