September 25, 2007 Archives

Bring 5 copies of your paper.

Your revision (4-5 pages, due next week) will require outside academic sources, but this version can simply focus on your chosen literary text (Frost's poetry, The Professor and the Madman, or Hamlet).

Your thesis should reflect your ability to make an argument that moves beyond summarizing the plot or describing the characters. Language that I suggested in class includes "If we consider [a passage] in [a particular work] to mean only [a particular thing], we exclude the possibility that..."  or "Because [observation], [claim]."

Thus, "Hamlet and Harry Potter are similar in many ways" does not make a thesis. We can make it more specific: "In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the young hero, tasked by the ghosts of his parents to complete their unfinished battle, is far less philosophical and far more active than Hamlet is when he faces his own task in Acts I through III. Because Hamlet is still reeling from the destruction of what was a stable home, and Harry has never known a stable home, Harry is better suited to putting his personal needs aside in order to accomplish his mission." 

Feel free to post trackbacks to this page if you would like to use your blogs to discuss the development of your thesis.

You are welcome to view the movie, but it is not a required text and our class discussion will focus on the script.