Jerz > Writing > Academic
[ Argument | Title | Thesis | Blueprint | Pro/Con | Quoting | MLA Format ]
| The biography Black Elk Speaks challenges the Western genre’s stereotype of the “savage Indian” through its attention to cultural detail, its use of Indian words, and its direct quotes from Black Elk. |
There is nothing magically “correct” about a thesis on challenging a cultural stereotype. Instead of claiming that a book “challenges a genre’s stereotypes,” you might instead argue that some text “provides a more expensive but more ethical solution than X” or “undermines Jim Smith’s observation that ‘[some quote from Smith here]’”. (Don’t automatically use “challenges a genre’s stereotype” in the hopes of coming up with the “correct” thesis.)
A more complicated thesis statement for a paper that asks you to demonstrate your ability engage with someone else’s ideas (rather than simply summarize or react to someone else’s ideas) might follow a formula like this:
| Although Smith says “quote a passage that makes a specific claim you intend to disagree with” (123), in this paper I will use Brown’s concept of X to argue that [your original thesis goes here].” | |
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For a short paper (1-2 pages), the thesis statement is often the first sentence. A complex thesis statement for a long paper may be part of a thesis paragraph. But it’s hard to go wrong if you put your thesis first.
If you’re not sure whether you have a good thesis statement, see whether you can fit your ideas into one of these basic patterns.
| [Something] [does something] because [reason(s)]. or Because [reason(s)], [something] [does something]. | |
| Although [opposing evidence], [reasons] show [something] [does something]. |
If you are just starting out, and you are still developing an original, evidence-based claim to defend, a simpler formula is probably best. Once you have done the research, and you understand the subject, then a formula like the following won’t look like random words; it will suggest a way to frame a nuanced, complex argument that goes beyond making non-controversial factual statements.
| While [a specific, named person] says [a direct quote or paraphrase from the source], [a different, named person] says [something else]. While the two authors disagree over [a minor point], they both share a deep concern over [the topic of your paper]. [Person one’s] refusal to accept [a particular point made by person two]suggests that [person one] is [your thesis — stating the real reason why person one won’t agree with person two]. | |
| What really matters is not guessing the magically correct words to fit some secret formula that your mean instructor is refusing to tell you. What matters is that you have researched your subject, that you have found and engaged meaningfully with peer-reviewed academic sources, and that you are developing an evidence-based claim, rather than summarizing or giving unsupported opinion. | |
Parts of a Thesis Statement
The thesis statement has 3 main parts: the limited subject, the precise opinion, and the blueprint of reasons.
Make sure you’ve chosen a subject that meets your instructor’s requirements for the assignment. (It never hurts to ask.)
The precise opinion gives your answer to a question about the subject. A good precise opinion is vital to the reader’s comprehension of the goal of the essay.
A blueprint is a plan. It lets the builder know that the foyer will be here, the living room will be to the east, the dining room to the west, and the family room will be north.The blueprint of an essay permits you to see the whole shape of your ideas before you start churning out whole paragraphs.While it’s okay for you to start writing down your ideas before you have a clear sense of your blueprint, your reader should never encounter a list of details without being told exactly what point these details are supposed to support. (For more details on the reasoning blueprint, see Blueprinting.)
| The biography Black Elk Speaks challenges the Western genre’s stereotype of the “savage Indian” through its attention to cultural detail, its use of Indian words, and its direct quotes from Black Elk. | |
In the blueprint, the author signals an intention to support the precise opinion. The author of the example above introduces three different kinds of evidence:
Informed by this blueprint, the reader expects to encounter one section (a paragraph or more) devoted to each subtopic.The blueprint determines the shape of your paper. | |
If your thesis statement introduces three reasons A, B and C, the reader will expect a section on reason A, a section on reason B, and a section on reason C.
For a single paragraph, you might only spend one sentence on each reason. For a 2-3 page paper, each reason might get its own paragraph. For a 10-page paper, each reason might contain its own local thesis statement, with its own list of reasons, so that each section involves several paragraphs.To emphasize the structure of your essay, repeat keywords or paraphrased ideas from the blueprint as you introduce the sections in which you expand on each point. Crafting good transitions is a skill that takes time and practice. (See Transitions and Reminders of Thesis).
Note: If you repeat your blueprint phrases and your thesis statement robotically (“The third point I want to talk about is how Black Elk Speaks accurately represents the Indian lifestyle through its direct quotes from Black Elk.”), your writing will be rather dry and lifeless. Dull writing is probably better than aimless rambling, although neither is terribly effective. |
Note: A thesis statement amounts to nothing if the paper is not completely focused on that main point. Blueprinting helps create the coherency of the thesis throughout the entire essay, which makes it a necessary part of the thesis statement.
| Black Elk Speaks accurately represents Indian lifestyle through its attention to cultural detail, its use of Indian words, and its direct quotes from Black Elk. | |
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| Is Black Elk Speaks a tragedy? | |
| This is a question, not a statement. It’s fine to sit down at the keyboard with the intention of writing a paper to answer this question, but before you start churning out the sentences, you should have a clear idea of what answer you’re trying to support. | |
| This paper will look at the book’s attention to cultural detail, its use of Indian words, and its direct quotations from Black Elk, in order to determine whether Black Elk Speaks accurately represents Indian lifestyle. | |
| The above sample is slightly better because it offers more detail, but it still doesn’t say what position the author is taking on the topic of whether the book is accurate. | |
| Because the events in the story emphasize Black Elk’s role as a Sioux Warrior, and do not describe his eventual conversion to Catholicism and membership in the Society of St. Joseph, Black Elk Speaks presents a skewed and simplified view of the complex history of Native Americans. | |
| Note that the above sample contains a topic (the accuracy of Black Elk Speaks), opinion (it is skewed and simplified), and reasoning (because the book only tells part of the story). You don’t need to present those three parts in that exact order every time; furthermore, your instructor may have a good reason to ask you for a different organization. But most of the time, including these three parts will help your reader to follow your ideas much more closely. | |
| Biographies of all types can teach us many things about the past. What was the culture like? What was the language like? And what did the people say? One such book is Black Elk Speaks, which tells the story of a Sioux warrior in the late 1800s. How accurate is this book? This paper will investigate the cultural details, the language, and what Black Elk actually said, in order to determine the answer. | |
| The above sample starts off with a wordy, general statement about biographies. But the main topic isn’t about biographies of all types, it’s specifically about one book, Black Elk Speaks. | |
17 Oct 2000 — originally posted by Nicci Jordan, UWEC Junior
08 Dec 2000 — first posted here. Maintained by Prof. Jerz.
13 Dec 2003 — links updated
22 Sep 2006 — moderate revisions by Jerz
29 Oct 2011 — updated by Jerz
14 June 2015 — minor adjustments
Blueprinting: Planning Your Essay
A blueprint is a rough but specific plan, or outline, which defines the structure of your whole essay. The blueprint, usually located within the thesis statement, is a brief list of the points you plan to make, compressed into just a few words each, in the same order in which they appear in the body of your paper.
Hochstein, Jordan, and Jerz
Thesis Reminders
A thesis reminder is a direct echo of the thesis statement. In a short paper, the topic sentence of each paragraph should repeat words or phrases from the thesis statement.
Dennis G. Jerz
Timed Essays: Planning and Organizing in a Crunch
View Comments
The Engliah Civil War, the French Revolution and the American Revilution have contributed to democratic prinicples. That was my thesis, I need help to improve it thanks!
It really depends upon the kind of paper you been asked to write. If your teacher wants to check your knowledge, this structure will help you display your knowledge.
If your instructor wants you to argue a point of view, this thesis wouldn't be debatable. It looks fairly easy to prove, as long as you have accurate facts. A paper that provides evidence in favor of this uncontroversial point is less valuable than a paper that a rational person could debate (using evidence).
rough thesis:
Despite how times have changed, and how mankind has grown as a whole, classism is still a large issue due to the inequality for the working class, the system of values the culture has created, and the levels of prejudice pertaining to race.
do you have any suggestions? I feel like it's lacking but I don't know what to change
Do you plan to include sections on how times have changed (over what period, and what sources are providing measurements that help you define the change) or how mankind has grown (same comment)? Large as compared to what? Who defines what "large" means? Does a culture have only one system of values? While race and class often go together, I'm not sure how the reference to race in the third point helps support a main idea about class.
I would tell my own students that they should pick a specific essay (or law, or presidential speech, or court ruling) and focus on that specific text, explaining the three reasons why Jim Smith's 1960 essay on class is (or is not) more divisive than it is progressive. Without a specific idea to resond to, a paper like this will quickly fill with generalities that don't actually offer you the opportunity to demonstrate your critical thinking skills.
As I always say in a situation like this, the instructor who created the assignment and will be grading it is the best person to help you -- I don't know how your instructor intends to evaluate your work, so I can only say what I would tell my own students.
My teacher only asked us to write an essay on one of the isms, including some examples from in class (hamlet, one of the short stories and a song he played) and I wanted to talk about how classism and racism connect but, clearly, im not getting it across. Im being too general, right? Do you think I should talk about classism and racism during a certain period of time and then talk about how it is currently?
I find students often start out too vague, so your instinct to get more specific is good. But I won't be marking your paper, so you really should ask your instructor.
Hello,
My assignment is to write a persuasive essay on a topic of my choice. I decided on the topic should cigarettes be banned? After conducting research, I arrived at my thesis: Cigarettes should be illegal in the United States because they are highly addictive, cause serious health issues and premature death and their use imposes large financial costs to society. I want to make sure I can provide a sufficient argument. Therefore, what do you think of my thesis? Is it focused enough?
A really persuasive paper would also address the opposing view.
Here is my research paper thesis. Tell me what you think.
"Jamaican and Filipino domestic workers in Toronto face discrimination and Human Rights violations in all aspects of their job. Domestic workers are often categorized for duties based on the intersections of their race, class and gender. Domestic workers also face exploitation by their employers while being institutionally discriminated against thus causing them to internalize the stereotypes developed about them"
If you have been asked to demonstrate your knowledge by explaining something, this thesis is probably fine. If your assignment is do demonstrate your ability to defend a debatable position, this thesis is probably too obvious. But really, your instructor would be the best person to ask.
very helpful
I have to write a thesis statement for the poem "Apparently With No Surprise" by Emily Dickinson. Here's what I have: The poem "Apparently With No Surprise" illustrates Dickinson's reaction to nature by heavy use of personification.
Any comments on how to make it better?
That depends on the assignment. If you are asked to explain your knowledge of a literary technique, it's probably fine. If your assignment is to defend a debatable interpretation of what the poem means, your thesis should focus more on what, exactly, is her reaction to nature. See this video on literary close reading: http://jerz.setonhill.edu/blog/2012/08/23/close-reading-introduction-to-a-college-english-skill/
Well, I thought that there was 5 parts of a thesis statement for a 5 paragraph essay??
That's a reasonable way to approach writing a thesis for a five-paragraph essay, but this document is about the thesis statement in general, so it doesn't go into that kind of detail. Your instructor may have something specific in mind, so it would be best to check with him or her.
Although college students are choosing safe fields with money-making potential, few or none at all are no longer choosing risky careers that will help society. More college students appear to be focusing on popularity, social power, and the reemerging popularity of fraternities and sororities, instead of focusing on choosing a life-long career. This is my thesis, I have to base it off of three sentences... What do you think?
Is it "few" or "none at all"? Those are very different claims. Who decides whether a career is "risky"? How will you measure whether something will "help society"? Watch out for the double negatives.
i am writing about marital relationships in a selection of Neil Simon's plays
thesis statement: though the family institution and marriages are considered the most resistant institutions in the American society, these institutions faced sever changes; in their roles, construction, functions, and emotional aspects. these institutions also affected by the Great Depression, the Jazz Age and World War II, which in another consequence caused Simon to write about marital relationships and emphasize in his plays the need to choose the right person to marry and the importance of family since he grow up in a fragmented family during the depression and experienced 5 marriages of his own.................. So does my thesis statement seems clear and good?
You've certainly hit on an important theme in Simon, and in American drama in general -- the nuclear family. Your plan to analyze 4 different aspects of marriage and cover 3 different historical time periods is ambitious -- but that plan would be a paper all by itself, even if you never brought up Neil Simon.
Without knowing the full details about what level class you're taking, whether this is supposed to be a 3-page practice paper or a 50-page thesis, etc., I'll just offer some quick responses to what I see.
You say "the family institution and marriages are considered" -- but who does the considering? Neil Simon? His critics? People completely unrelated to the question of what Neil Simon is doing in his plays? (This clutters up your thesis statement -- focus on Simon's plays, rather than the environment in which the author grew up.)
The term "family institution and marriage" is pretty vague -- it almost sounds as if you're not sure you can go into sufficient depth about marriage, so you've slipped in "family institution" so you can talk about anything family related. There's nothing really wrong with that, but once you've got your paper finished, make sure you go back and take out any references to topics that you didn't have time to address. (I think you'll find plenty on marriage.)
Is there any evidence to support the counter-argument that the family does NOT change, or that the family is NOT affected by the eras you mention? How important is it, then, for you to PROVE these general statements about how marriage is affected by social forces? You could probably churn out several paragraphs on how the family unit changed over time, but those paragraphs wouldn't demonstrate your ability to analyze a work of literature, so your literature instructor would probably not find those paragraphs very valuable.
I often point out to my students that describing what it was like back in the day, looking for parallels between an author's life and the lives of the characters, and pointing to the fact that a work explores a certain theme are all habits we fall back on to churn out paragraphs, but in a literature class your instructor wants you to analyze the literature, rather than do all those other things.
Simon's career spans decades, so it might be a good idea to take some specific plays he wrote early in his career, and some specific plays he wrote late in his career, and just focus on one, very narrow theme -- how spouses use their children in battles against each other, or standing up to an abusive spouse, or the limits of forgiveness. Then, use differences between the early and late plays to support some claim about Simon's dramatic technique, rather than using history and biography (with intermittent references to Simon's plays) to support your claims about something that exists in the real world (marriage).
So, instead of saying "This detail from the play illustrates this fact from the the real world" or "This thing that happens in the play is sort of like this thing that happened to Simon in real life," try instead to say things like, "In his later plays, Simon's mastery of dialogue allows him to invoke a more powerful, more complex mixture of bitterness and love in confrontations scenes between married couples, wheres in his earlier plays the marital relationships tend to be shallower because spousal confrontation scenes are undermined by dark humor and the threat of violence."
By the way, I have no idea if that's true -- I just made up a thesis that makes a strong claim about Simon's plays, rather than a thesis that explores marriage itself.
I'd say at this point that you should pick a small number of plays -- maybe two of his first plays and two of his most recent plays, and read them, looking for references to an depictions of marriage. Then, start looking for patterns.
Do all the plays feature overbearing men and silent women? Do the early plays show strong women as nasty and bitter, while the later plays show strong women as noble and generous? Does Simon show only one kind of marriage in the early plays, while in the later plays he has more than one marriage, so that he can explore a wider range of contrasting and conflicting themes?
can a thesis statement be phrased as a question
You would have to check with your teacher, but statements and questions are different things, so I would say no.