The Thesis sentence 234
and 193
Guided Writing :
Write your own thesis sentence.
A.1. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn is a great American novel. (Weak one)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain develops a contrast between life on
the river and life on the shore.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. "John Keats uses symbols to show that we can only find happiness in this world if we accept our own mortality"--thesis=technique + theme)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://facstaff.gpc.edu/~shale/humanities/composition/handouts/litpaper.html
B. Samples of different
types of the thesis sentences : Romeo and Juliet
3. COMPARISON-CONTRAST: (1) "A comparison and a contrast of Romeo with Juliet shows that one of them typifies modern adolescents, but the other does not."
4.CAUSE-EFFECT: "From the moment they first spy each other, there is a fateful chain of cause and effect leading to Romeo and Juliet's deaths."
5. CLASSIFICATION: "There are five types of love demonstrated in Romeo and Juliet romantic, erotic, friendship, familial, and religious."
6. PSYCHOLOGY: "Romeo and Juliet typify teenagers who must deal with dysfunctional parents."
7. POLITICS: "The two clans in Romeo and Juliet, the Montagues and the Capulets, are symbols of opposing political parties such as the Democrats and the Republicans."
8. ANTHROPOLOGY: "Romeo and Juliet demonstrate many of the same mating rituals as do teenagers in aboriginal societies."
9. FEMINIST STUDIES: "Juliet demonstrates many of the modern traits of a contemporary feminist caught between traditional and modern gender values and roles."
10. PHILOSOPHY: "Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet demonstrate an unshakably positive acceptance of the philosopher Plato's world of the Ideal.
11. ETHICS: "The play Romeo and Juliet demonstrates why it is morally right [or wrong] to let teenagers fall in love with whomever they choose."
12. BUSINESS/ECONOMICS: "Romeo, Juliet, their family, and
their friends exemplify a culture of both privilege and hard work in the class
to which they belong."--------->
C. Other samples of thesis sentences in
literary essays
Example 13 :Stephen King updates the age-old story of Scheherazade to
further his plot in Misery. This
thesis is short and direct. It mentions the author and the book, and introduces
the element of literature the writer is going to discuss (plot), along with an
earlier story King uses. The reader can expect that the next paragraph will
give background on the character of Scheherazade, and that each paragraph in
the essay will discuss plot and Scheherazade in some way. Example 14:In Henry James’s The Portrait
of a Lady, the imagery of architecture is used to create characterization. Again,
the thesis is short and direct. The writer thinks that one element is used to
enhance another. We would expect the paragraphs that follow to indicate
specific examples of how James uses architecture to “build” his characters’
personalities. Example 15 :Peter Straub’s A Ghost Story
and Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw are alike in that they both apply
characterization in the same ways: they use multiple viewpoints, they use
contradictory explanations of the same events, and they emphasize the
changeable nature of their characters. In this example, two works are compared by
using three methods. The reader expects that the next paragraph will discuss
Straub’s use of characterization by using multiple viewpoints, followed by
James’s treatment in the same way. The writer will then move on to a discussion
of contradictory explanations in each work. Example
16 :The
poems “i thank you God,” by e. e. cummings,
and “The Swing,” by Robert Louis Stevenson, use visual and tactile imagery to
create the sensation of movement. In
this example, two types of imagery will be discussed in two separate works.
They will be presented in the order in which they are mentioned in the thesis.http://exampleessays.wordpress.com/essay-types/literary-analysis-essay/ D.
What is a Thesis Sentence?
A thesis
sentence, as we've said, is a kind of contract between you and your reader. It
asserts, controls, and structures your argument for your reader's ease. Understand that you can revise the
thesis sentence. Ask yourself: Is my argument clear? Does it present the logic
and the structure of my paper? Does it emphasize the points I want to
emphasize?
Will This Thesis
Sentence Make the Grade? (A Check List) In the end, you may have spent a good deal of time writing
your thesis and still not know if it's a good one. Here are ten questions to
ask yourself.
1.Does my thesis sentence attempt to answer (or at least to
explore) a challenging intellectual question?
2. Is the point I'm making one that would generate discussion and argument, or
is it one that would leave people asking, "So what?"
3.Is my thesis too vague? Too
general? Should I focus on some more specific aspect of my topic?
4. Does my thesis deal directly with the topic at hand, or is it a declaration
of my personal feelings?
5. Does my thesis indicate the direction of my argument? Does my introductory
paragraph define terms important to my
thesis? If I am writing a research paper, does my "place" my thesis
within the larger, ongoing scholarly discussion about my topic?
6. Is the language in my thesis vivid and clear?
7. Have I structured my sentence so that the important information is in
the main clause? 8. Have
I used subordinate clauses to house less important information? 9. Have
I used parallelism to show the relationship between parts of my thesis? 10. In short, is this thesis the very best
sentence that it can be? http://theliterarylink.com/thesis.html