How to Write a Thesis[1]
I. Stating Your Thesis
A thesis is a one sentence statement about your topic. It’s an assertion about your topic, something you claim to be true. Notice that a topic alone makes no such claim; it merely defines an area to be covered. The topic is seldom stated as a complete sentence with a subject and predicate. To make your topic into a thesis statement, you need to make a claim about it, make it into a sentence. Notice, however, that a sentence stating an obvious and indisputable truth won’t work as a thesis:
(Bad) Thesis: This university offers a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics.
That’s a complete sentence, and it asserts something to be true, but as a thesis it’s a dead end. It’s a statement of fact, pure and simple, and requires having little or nothing added. A good thesis asks to have more said about it. It demands some proof. Your job is to show your reader that your thesis is true, so that in end the reader will say, “Ah yes, now that it’s been explained, I can see that the Physics Department really doesn’t place enough emphasis on relativity theory in its undergraduate courses.”
1. Think of your thesis as a project. Michael Barsanti suggests that it might be easiest to think about this project as having two parts: the first where you say something about the work at hand (a reading), and a second where you explain what the consequences or uses of this reading are. This approach can be structured as a brief formula:
“I want to show you [something in the text] in order to say [something you should care about].”
In other words, be argumentative and a little controversial. By “argumentative” I mean that it makes a case. That’s the biggest difference between a thesis and a topic — a topic is something like “Slavery in Huck Finn.” A thesis, on the other hand, makes a specific case, it tries to prove something. One way to tell a thesis from a topic: if it doesn’t have an active verb, it’s almost certainly still a topic. A thesis is properly “controversial” if an intelligent person might possibly disagree with it. If everyone agrees immediately, your thesis is too obvious and not worthwhile.
2. Your thesis should apply specifically and exclusively to the works at hand. If your thesis could apply to several other works in addition to the one(s) you are writing about, you need to narrow it down.
The story of Kate Swift in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio tells us that communication is important.
This thesis is so vague that you could plug in nearly any story and it would still work. It’s not enough to deal in vague generalities. Some students want to write their paper on God and man or on the black experience in the twentieth century. Both are far too nebulous to produce a good paper. Get your hands dirty with the text. Warning: if your thesis makes any claims about Society, The History of Mankind, People Since the Beginning of Time, All the People of the World, Everyone Who Ever Lived, etc, then you are off to a bad start!
3. Your thesis must do more than express judgments about the characters in the texts. They are not human beings. They do not exist outside the text. They cannot change, no matter how much you may want them to. You may talk about them as having a psychology with motivations and feelings and the like, as long as this discussion is in service of a larger point and shows awareness that the character is a carefully constructed representation inside a carefully and deliberately constructed work.
Instead of:
The Reverend Hartman is a deeply frustrated man.
Try:
Sherwood Anderson uses descriptions of body parts, especially hands, to show that Reverend Hartman is a deeply frustrated man.
This holds true for texts as well as characters. A college English paper isn’t the place to praise or blame works of literature: theses like “Paradise Lost is an enduring expression of the human spirit” or “The Sound and the Fury isn’t successful in its choice of narrative techniques” aren’t appropriate. That’s the business of book reviewers. No need to give thumbs-up or thumbs-down; evaluate the work on its own terms. Be analytical, not evaluative.
4. Your thesis must not invoke or rephrase a cliché.
The story of Louise Bentley is a perfect example of “once bitten, twice shy.”
Clichés in writing are always signs of laziness, but that’s not why I so strictly prohibit their use. Clichés have an insidious way of stifling our thinking; more than simple laziness, they are quite often signs of intellectual cowardice.
As one wag has stated, “clichés really stick in my craw. Normally, I play things pretty close to the vest, but if you use a cliché with me, you’ll be skating on thin ice, because clichés really send cold shivers down my spine. In fact if you step into the breach and open that whole can of worms with me it could be the straw that broke the camel’s back. I could go on until the cows come home, but unfortunately time waits for no man.”
II. Supporting Your Thesis
Think of your thesis as a statement that remains to be proved. It commits you to showing your reader that it’s founded upon good evidence and sound reasoning. That is, you want to show that you know what you’re talking about, that you’ve investigated the matter thoroughly, have considered the implications of your findings, and are offering in your thesis not mere opinion, but a carefully thought-out conclusion. This job of uncovering and displaying your reasoning is the next step in writing a thesis/support essay.
As your paper develops, you may find your first hunch was off-target. If so, revise your proposition to show your new understanding. Make a trial statement early and watch for possible improvements to assure a strong proposition in your final paper.
It isn’t unusual to hear people say they can’t write any more because they’ve run out of ideas, as though every sentence had to present a new thought. Most experienced writers understand, though, that a whole essay, a whole book, can be built from a single idea that is fully explored and developed.
The thesis statement should appear very close to the beginning of the paper. Some professors want it in a specific place – often the last sentence of the first paragraph. That’s as good a position as any, but I prefer not to be rigidly formulaic in such matters. In any case, though, the thesis statement should be very near the beginning (in the first paragraph or two).
Jack Lynch offers this insight into how professors assign grades: “I usually have a good idea of what a paper’s going to get by the time I finished the first page. If you give me a solid thesis right up front, you’ve probably earned at least a B-plus. Use the beginning of your paper wisely!”
Examples of Good and Bad Theses
Bad Theses:
1. Fate versus free will in Macbeth.
This one isn’t even a thesis — it’s still a topic. Remember, a thesis should say something specific, and it should be a full sentence (with a verb), not a sentence fragment.
2. Money is important in Moll Flanders’s life.
This one fails for two reasons. First, although it’s a sentence and has a verb, it doesn’t say much—just some vague indication that a topic is worth attention. It’s easy to change any topic to this kind of wishy-washy thesis, but the word “important” (like its synonyms, “significant,” “worth consideration,” and so on) won’t do. This thesis is also weak because it’s not controversial—who in his or her right mind would argue with it? Moll is obsessed with money, and it’s obvious to anyone who opens the book. You have to say something that’s not obvious.
3. In Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens presents a realistic picture of social interaction in Victorian London.
How do you know? What makes you think Victorian London was really like what Dickens describes? Be careful of circular reasoning: it appears in a book, so it must have been part of real life; therefore I can discuss how the book is like real life. Unless you’ve done research on actual social conditions in the nineteenth century, don’t presume to talk about the world outside the book. All your attention should be on interpreting the text itself, without regard to things you don’t (and sometimes can’t) know.
4. Hamlet is an enduring testimony to the genius of William Shakespeare.
Ok, Hamlet is great and all. But it’s the easiest thing in the world to praise something you know your teacher likes. That’s not only lazy, it’s intellectually dishonest, even if you really like Shakespeare. Good English papers are analytical, not evaluative—your thesis should never be that a work is good or bad. (That’s the business of book reviewers.) Take it for granted that Hamlet deserves two thumbs up: there’s no need for you to say it, and certainly no reason to make it the center of your argument.
5. In its departure from the familiar metrical forms of its day, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass is ahead of its time.
A good thesis should at least nod in the direction of historicism. Evaluating old works by modern standards does them no justice.
Good Theses:
Showing that a book claims to do one thing while actually doing another—that’s pure gold for an English-paper. Why? Such theses almost always have to be both specific and controversial. For example:
1. “Many critics have called the novel misogynistic, but the last chapter suggests it is more feminist than usually assumed.”
(Be careful, though, about saying what “many critics” have “usually” said: you can’t make these things up. Back it up with research into what real critics have actually said about it.)
2. “Although the religious tone in the poem suggests a devout belief in God, the speaker is in fact experiencing a crisis of faith.”
Note that I said the speaker, not the poet: avoid making claims about real-life authors, whose opinions you may or may not be able to guess from their work. Never assume anything is autobiographical.
Another thing that makes English professors jump for joy: close attention to language. Don’t be content with mere plot summary. Look instead at the exact words the author uses, and try to base your argument on them. Some good models:
3. “When the work turns to questions of sexuality, the diction becomes much more Latinate and scientific, suggesting the character is uncomfortable with more blunt descriptions of sex.”
4. “In the last stanza, the poem suddenly switches from the third person to the first, signaling more personal involvement.”
5. “Where we would expect verbs of being and the passive voice, the author gives us a series of powerful active verbs, and assigns agency to the inanimate objects she describes, making the rocks and trees not mere background but active characters in the story.”
Try to pay attention to things like verb tense (past, present) and voice (active, passive), diction (the choice of words), words that are repeated or pointedly avoided, word order, etc.
[1] Adapted from and inspired by Michael Gamer, Jack Lynch, and Michael Barsanti as well as “A Guide for Writing Research Papers” at Capital Community College, Hartford (http://webster.commnet.edu/mla/index.shtml).