Let’s look at another example. Suppose your literature professor hands out the following assignment in a class on the American novel: Write an analysis of some aspect of Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn. “This will be easy,” you think. “I loved Huckleberry Finn !” You grab a pad of paper and write: Ramage, John D. John C. Bean, and June Johnson. The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing. 7th ed. New York: Longman, 2014. Lunsford, Andrea A. The St. Martin’s Handbook. 7th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. 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. Writers use all kinds of techniques to stimulate their thinking and to help them clarify relationships or comprehend the broader significance of a topic and arrive at a thesis statement. For more ideas on how to get started essay about friendship pdf, see our handout on brainstorming . This final thesis statement presents an interpretation of a literary work based on an analysis of its content. Of course, for the essay itself to be successful, you must now present evidence from the novel that will convince the reader of your interpretation. Here’s a working thesis with potential: you have highlighted an important aspect of the novel for investigation. However, it’s still not clear what your analysis will reveal. Your reader is intrigued but is still thinking, “So what? What’s the point of this contrast? What does it signify?” Perhaps you are not sure yet, either. That’s fine—begin to work on comparing scenes from the book and see what you discover. Free write, make lists essay 5 paragraph, jot down Huck’s actions and reactions. Eventually you will be able to clarify for yourself, and then for the reader writing to share experiences essay, why this contrast matters. After examining the evidence and considering your own insights, you write: Now you have a working thesis! Included in this working thesis is a reason for the war and some idea of how the two sides disagreed over this reason. As you write the essay, you will probably begin to characterize these differences more precisely, and your working thesis may start to seem too vague. Maybe you decide that both sides fought for moral reasons, and that they just focused on different moral issues. You end up revising the working thesis into a final thesis that really captures the argument in your paper: Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is a great American novel. A thesis is never a list. "For political, economic, social and cultural reasons get paid to write academic essays, communism collapsed in Eastern Europe" does a good job of "telegraphing" the reader what to expect in the essay—a section about political reasons higher english personal reflective essay, a section about economic reasons, a section about social reasons, and a section about cultural reasons. However, political, economic, social and cultural reasons are pretty much the only possible reasons why communism could collapse. This sentence lacks tension and doesn't advance an argument. Everyone knows that politics, economics, and culture are important. First free samples of a research paper, analyze your primary sources. Look for tension meaning of thesis in english, interest, ambiguity, controversy, and/or complication. Does the author contradict himself or herself? Is a point made and later reversed? What are the deeper implications of the author's argument? Figuring out the why to one or more of these questions, or to related questions, will put you on the path to developing a working thesis. (Without the why, you probably have only come up with an observation—that there are, for instance who writes paper who writes paper, many different metaphors in such-and-such a poem—which is not a thesis.) While Dukakis' "soft-on-crime" image hurt his chances in the 1988 election writing thesis statements college, his failure to campaign vigorously after the Democratic National Convention bore a greater responsibility for his defeat. A thesis should never be vague harvard university dissertation, combative or confrontational. An ineffective thesis would be essay model, "Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe because communism is evil." This is hard to argue (evil from whose perspective? what does evil mean?) and it is likely to mark you as moralistic and judgmental rather than rational and thorough. It also may spark a defensive reaction from readers sympathetic to communism. If readers strongly disagree with you right off the bat, they may stop reading. A thesis is never a question. Readers of academic essays expect to have questions discussed, explored, or even answered. A question ("Why did communism collapse in Eastern Europe?") is not an argument, and without an argument, a thesis is dead in the water.
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