She has a degree in International Affairs with a minor in Italian Studies, but her true passion has always been writing. If nothing immediately strikes you as interesting or no patterns or problems jump out at you, don’t worry. This handout describes some steps for planning and writing papers about literary texts. A good gauge of complexity is whether you feel you understand more about your topic than you did when you began (and even just reaching a higher state of confusion is a good indicator that you’re treating your topic in a complex way). Your paper will justify why the events you’ve chosen were the most significant. For readers, these concerns are also crosscut race, class and gender, which makes these intersecting categories dependable sources of interest. (919) 962-7710 Though you may feel like you have to select a topic that sounds like something your instructor would be interested in, don’t overlook the fact that you’ll be more invested in your paper and probably get more out of it if you make the topic something pertinent to yourself. Your thesis should be able to answer the brutal question “so what?”. Plot is the string of events that go into the narrative. For example, given my working thesis on education, I am more interested in Victor’s development than in relating Frankenstein to the gothic genre, so I might decide to treat the novel as a bildungsroman. You might find that most of your topic could be supported, for instance, by a consideration of character alone. Daily meditation is important because it lowers blood pressure, alleviates anxiety, and helps us to live more mindfully. Learning a new language gives students a new perspective and increases their tolerance of other cultures and backgrounds. At this point in my Frankenstein project, I’ve become interested in ideas on education that seem to appear pretty regularly, and I have a general sense that aspects of Victor’s education lead to tragedy. A good thesis statement makes a non-obvious, specific point about a : ighly focused topic. The previous nine steps are intended to give you a sense of the tasks usually involved in writing a good interpretive paper. As you make your notes keep track of page numbers so you can quickly find the passages in your book again and so you can easily document quoted passages when you write without having to fish back through the book. Second, choose the pieces of evidence you’ll be able to say the most about. Published on January 11, 2019 by Shona McCombes. If you’re quoting passages without interpreting them, you’re not demonstrating your reasoning skills or helping the reader. So you’ve just been assigned a research paper, and your teacher or professor keeps stressing the importance of a well-developed thesis statement. Writing a great thesis statement is easier than it looks when you’re armed with the right instructions. A critical lens essay is a type of literary analysis paper. List your ideas. As mentioned in step 2, you need to address these big topics in a complex way. A good interpretive paper does not need to cover all elements of the story—plot, genre, narrative form, character, and setting. Without a thesis, your argument falls flat and your information is unfocused. Your email address will not be published. She spent five years working abroad and has traveled extensively. Do this step just off the top of your head. Choose at least three strong points on which your paper will be focused. But just as, however, fiction has certain features that guide your analysis (like plot and point of view), other literary forms can have their own unique formal elements that must be considered and can also fit within certain larger genres or literary traditions. If, for example, you are jotting down your ideas about Frankenstein, you can focus on the observations from the narrator or things that certain characters say or do. independent study, university study, family reading). Do you have any tips for writing a solid thesis statement? Decide whether you agree or disagree with the quotation as interpreted. In fact, most professors are aware that their interpretations are debatable and actually love a good argument. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. Some popular genres within fiction include the gothic, the romance, the detective story, the bildungsroman (this is just a German term for a novel that is centered around the development of its main characters), and the novel of manners (a novel that focuses on the behavior and foibles of a particular class or social group). Writing tends to be a highly individual task, so adapt these suggestions to fit your own habits and inclinations. For example, a discussion of Victor Frankenstein’s education might take into account aspects of his character that appear to be developed (or underdeveloped) by the particular kind of education he undertakes. Don’t let your audience read for too long without having an idea of where your paper is headed. Usually, repetition of particular aspects tends to render those elements more conspicuous. Pearson, 2011. Remember that we, as readers, are lazy—all of us. What is the time period, the location, the time of day, the season, the weather, the type of room or building? There are certainly other organizational options that might work better depending on the type of points I want to stress. It would be useful to refer to Victor Frankenstein’s youthful reading in alchemy, but my reader will be more impressed by some analysis of how the writings of the alchemists—who pursued magical principles of chemistry and physics—reflect the ambition of his own goals. Don’t spend a lot of time composing this statement at this stage since it will probably change. Your plot could also have similarities to whole groups of other stories, all having conventional or easily recognizable plots. The process for writing the introduction informs how you write your thesis statement. For my paper about education in Frankenstein, I’ll want to take notes on what Victor Frankenstein reads at home, where he goes to school and why, what he studies at school, what others think about those studies, etc. Bilingual individuals tend to have stronger memories than monolinguals.2. A paper about education in general in Frankenstein will probably not get my reader’s attention as much as a more specific topic about the impact of the learning environment on the main character. To say that there is no one answer is not to say that anything we decide to say about a literary text is valid, interesting, or valuable. That’s fine. Both tell the story of a character who reaches too ambitiously after knowledge and suffers dire consequences. If an author wanted to convey a meaning, wouldn’t she be much better off writing an essay just telling us what she meant? Flip back through the book and consider what interests you about this piece of writing—what seemed strange, new, or important? For example, if you’ve traced instances of water imagery in a novel, a next step may be to look at how that imagery is used in the text to imply something about, for instance, femininity and/or race. I’ll start with Victor’s education at home, then discuss his learning at the University, and finally address his own experiments. Take your inspiration from the format of the critical lens essay introduction, making sure to revise the wording to make your statement as convincing as possible. The majority of the essay consists of elements from literature, usually two works, that support your position on the legitimacy of the quotation. Avoid the temptation to load your paper with evidence from your text. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. For instance, if the quotation suggests problems, consider the conflict and resolution of literary works. These elements are certainly important. For example, you write, "In the drama, 'Othello,' by William Shakespeare, the development of the characters and the treatment of the themes shows how literature mirrors life.". Now that you’ve researched possible answers to your question, decide what you want your readers to take away from your paper. When it comes to writing a critical lens essay, it's true that you get the chance to view wisdom and literature through a critical lens. Download our thesis statement template for a simplified guide to writing your thesis statement. A thesis statement should show exactly what your paper will be about, and will help you keep your paper to a manageable topic. Are you trying to convince them that a certain policy needs to be implemented? That they should vote a certain way? Not all problems lead in interesting directions, but some definitely do and even seem to be important parts of the text. Follow these simple steps to write a strong, well-developed thesis statement. Also keep in mind that if you found something peculiar in the text you’re writing about, chances are good that other people will have been perplexed by these moments as well and will be interested to see how you make sense of it all. writing about non-fiction books At some point in your college career you may be asked to review a non-fiction book to enable you to learn more about some aspect of your course work. You’ll be able to keep your readers’ attention more easily if you show how your argument relates to something that concerns or interests them. In this case, you might not be convincing so much as explaining, but you’ll still need a thesis statement that outlines your answer. The story mentions books that its characters read and the different contexts in which learning takes place. In the course of reading that book, I keep noticing the author’s use of biblical imagery: Victor Frankenstein anticipates that “a new species would bless me as its creator and source” (52) while the monster is not sure whether to consider himself as an Adam or a Satan. Writing your thesis statement first as a researchable question can help guide you through the research process. A Short Guide to Writing About Literature. The Compare and Contrast Thesis Statement: Prework. But let’s not go to the other extreme. Once you have a working topic in mind, skim back over the text and make a more comprehensive list of the details that relate to your point. The certainty of this statement sets the stage for supporting your position. (Our Thesis Statements handout provides an example of a developing thesis statement for a literary analysis assignment.) To find your thesis statement: 1. Don’t assume that as long as you address one of these issues, your paper will be interesting. How do such texts mean something? Shelley, Mary. Now, things are a little different. In rethinking the issue of education in Frankenstein, I realize that I can narrow my topic in a number of ways: I could focus on education and culture (Victor’s education abroad), education in the sciences as opposed to the humanities (the monster reads Milton, Goethe, and Plutarch), or differences in learning environments (e.g. Consider an image that stuck with you, a character’s peculiar behavior or comments, a word choice that you found interesting, the unusual way the narrator describes an event, or the author’s placement of an action in an odd context. Character refers to the qualities assigned to the individual figures in the plot. Your thesis statement should always be placed in your introduction, but the exact position depends on how you work the rest of your paragraph(s). Determine what kind of paper you are writing: An analytical paper breaks down an issue or an idea into its component parts, evaluates the issue or idea, and presents this breakdown and evaluation to the audience. Your thesis can be a few sentences long, but should not be longer than a paragraph. Interpretations of literature are often opinions, but not all opinions are equal. You want to write a story that will draw readers in—that will engage them. When you are done, keep the best and delete the rest 2. From each of these examples, we can get a clear idea of what the paper will argue and what we want our readers to understand. Altogether the thesis statement connects the works to the quote. A strong thesis statement should take the form of a complete sentence that defines the main message of your paper. The interpretation and your agreement or disagreement serve as the foundation of your thesis statement. Chapel Hill, NC 27599 Writing Process. With this goal in mind, I’ll also take notes on how the monster educates himself, what he reads, and what he learns from those he watches. Can you tell your reader something relevant about the context of the text you’re interpreting, about the human condition, or about broader questions? Check out our guide for writing an excellent research paper to learn how you can ace your next paper. For my paper on education in Frankenstein, I’m interested in Victor’s going to the University of Ingolstadt to realize his father’s wish that Victor attend school where he could learn about another culture. Be prepared to challenge your own ideas about what gender, race, or class mean in a particular text. 1. Regular exercise is essential because it helps to reduce body weight, regulate blood pressure, and decrease the risk of heart disease. You want to develop complex ideas, and the best way to do that is to keep your ideas flexible until you’ve considered the evidence carefully. A good paper inevitably begins with the writer having a solid understanding of the work that she interprets. While this handout has used the example of a novel, Frankenstein, to help illustrate how to develop an argument about a literary text, the steps discussed above can apply to other forms of literature, too. Obviously, if you consider all of these elements, you’ll probably have too much evidence to fit effectively into one paper. Literature scholars have identified connections between literature and the following: economics, family dynamics, education, religion, mortality, law, politics, sexuality, history, psychology, the environment, technology, animality, citizenship, and migration, among others. In the novel Frankenstein, Victor works day and night to achieve his goal of bringing life to the dead, but once he realizes his goal, he is immediately repulsed by his creation and runs away. For example, a story might be told in a series of letters (this is called an epistolary form), in a sequence of journal entries, or in a combination of forms (Frankenstein is actually told as a journal included within a letter). Our handout on Paragraph Development can offer some guidance in this process; it provides a “5 Step Process to Paragraph Development” that prompts writers to explain, or interpret, each piece of evidence they include in a paragraph. In this example using the novel Frankenstein, your goal is merely to consider each of these aspects of fiction and include only those that are most relevant to your topic and most interesting to your reader. But if the meanings were always as clear as they are in parables, who would really need to write a paper analyzing them? Consider which elements of the piece support your opinion. Just think about a parable like the prodigal son or a nursery tale about “crying wolf.” Stories like these are reduced down to the bare elements, giving us just enough detail to lead us to their main points, and because they are relatively easy to understand and tend to stick in our memories, they’re often used in some kinds of education. All of these elements can reflect on the story’s events, and though the setting of a story tends to be less conspicuous than plot and character, setting still colors everything that’s said and done within its context. Victor tends to be ambitious, even compulsive about his studies, and I might be able to argue that his tendency to be extravagant leads him to devote his own education to writers who asserted grand, if questionable, conclusions. 12th ed. Avoid writing a paper that identifies a pattern in a story but doesn’t quite explain why that pattern leads to an interesting interpretation. Identifying the biblical references in Frankenstein might provide a good start to a paper—Mary Shelley does use a lot of biblical allusions—but a good paper must also tell the reader how those references are meaningful. A thesis statement is the sentence (or sentences) that captures your main argument, central point, or personal stance on a subject. Pick a topic that might allow you to learn about yourself and what you find important. There are more job opportunities available to multilingual employees.3. It’s during this activity that having a good knowledge of your text will come in handy and save you a lot of time. The effort to be more specific almost always leads to a thesis that will get your reader’s attention, and it also separates you from the crowd as someone who challenges ideas and looks into topics more deeply. For example, you can ask yourself how the topic you’ve selected connects to a larger category of concern. This step-by-step guide will make writing an excellent thesis statement a breeze so you can ace your next term paper. Can the reader trust that person to give an objective account, or does that narrator color the story with her own biases and interests? While it helps to have an idea of your thesis in place as you begin writing, you may find that your final version will be ready only once the rest of your paper is written. Monday 10 am-8 pm EDT Tuesday 10 am-10 pm EDT Wednesday 8 am-8 pm EDT Thursday 10 am-8 pm EDT Friday 10 am-4 pm EDT Saturday Closed Sunday 3 pm-7 pm EDT, © 2020 The Writing Center • University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License, avoid the obvious (in other words, it won’t argue a conclusion that most readers could reach on their own from a general knowledge of the story), support its main points with strong evidence from the story. We consulted these works while writing this handout. But what exactly is a thesis statement and how can you make sure yours is good enough? "Everyone's a critic," or so the saying goes. First, select the facts which bear the closest relation to your thesis statement. The process for writing the introduction informs how you write your thesis statement. Readers tend to be more dazzled with your interpretations of evidence than with a lot of quotes from the book. These types of stories are often called genres. For example, John Milton’s Paradise Lost is a long poem in the epic tradition that utilizes a specific meter (unrhymed iambic pentameter); these particularities of genre and form would likely shape your analysis of that text. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License. It might be helpful at this point to jot down all the elements of the text that have some bearing on the two or three topics that seem most promising. To support my thesis about Frankenstein, I’ve decided to group my evidence chronologically. Many novels don’t fit nicely into one genre, and others seem to borrow a bit from a variety of different categories; the same can be said for other forms of literature, like poetry and drama. Perhaps it is a synthesis of ideas and research that you have distilled into one point, and the rest of your paper will unpack it and present factual examples to show how you arrived at this idea. But, let’s say you want someone to actually read it. Keep in mind that your thesis statement may evolve as you continue researching and writing your paper. Based on the example above about foreign language instruction, our question would be: Why should foreign language instruction be mandatory in all elementary schools? Edited by J. Paul Hunter, Norton Critical Edition, 2nd ed., W.W. Norton, 2011. Below are several examples of well-developed thesis statements. It might seem that these texts do have specific meanings, and the instructor has already decided what those meanings are. Become familiar with the text. A thesis makes a specific statement to the reader about what you will be trying to argue. And it’s only by pushing those ideas that you can write a paper that raises interesting issues or problems and that offers creative interpretations related to those issues. How to write a thesis statement. For example, you write, "In the drama, 'Othello,' by William Shakespeare, the development of the characters and the treatment of the themes shows how literature mirrors life." Generally, the first few sentences consist of a hook and background information for context. Just because you’re writing fiction, it doesn’t give you license to make everything up. This is a weak thesis statement for two major reasons. Writing an analysis of a piece of literature can be a mystifying process. What follows are just some additional hints that might help you find an interesting topic and maybe even make the process a little more enjoyable. The thesis statement also includes literary elements, like characterization or theme, from the pieces that help support your position. First, literary analyses (or papers that offer an interpretation of literary texts) rely on the assumption that stories, poems, and plays must mean something. Without considering things too deeply, I’ll just write something like “Victor Frankenstein’s tragic ambition was fueled by a faulty education.”. What is the general mood, and who is present? There’s no substitute for a good general knowledge of your text. Think of this as the “who did what to whom” part of the story. In fact, a paper that did try to say something about all of these elements would be unfocused. Share them with us in the comments below! Whether you’re writing an argumentative paper, an informative essay, or a compare/contrast statement, you need a thesis. Based on the example above about foreign language instruction, our question would be: Your blueprint for writing: In this case, you start with a quotation, which you view through a "critical lens." Once you’ve made your expanded list of evidence, decide which supporting details are the strongest. Nadia Archuleta has a B.A. How to Write a Research Paper: The Complete Guide for Students, 9 of the Best Citation Generators to Make Your Research Easier. At this point, you want to include anything, anything, that might be useful, and you also want to avoid the temptation to arrive at definite conclusions about your topic. Pro tip #1: Writing your thesis statement first as a researchable question can help guide you through the research process. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial. Plots can also allow you to make connections between the story you’re interpreting and some other stories, and those connections might be useful in your interpretation. Since a thesis is so important, it’s probably a good idea to look at some tips on how to put together a strong one. Frankenstein. For example, the plot of Frankenstein, which involves a man who desires to bring life to the dead and creates a monster in the process, bears some similarity to the ancient Greek story of Icarus who flew too close to the sun on his wax wings. It’s even a good idea to test your ideas out on a friend, a classmate, or an instructor since talking about your ideas will help you develop them and push them beyond obvious interpretations of the text. For example, a character might act in some way that’s unaccountable, a narrator may leave out what we think is important information (or may focus on something that seems trivial), or a narrator or character may offer an explanation that doesn’t seem to make sense to us. After reading your text, a topic may just jump out at you, or you may have recognized a pattern or identified a problem that you’d like to think about in more detail. Well, okay, so maybe it does. In the example above, the three strong points I chose to focus my answer on (which I found through a little quick research) were: 1. Reading every day has many benefits, including improved focus, strengthened memory, and an expanded vocabulary. It should also foreshadow the main supporting points that will be discussed. So what makes a valid and interesting opinion? As you can see from these examples, each one includes a clear statement (“meditation is important,” “reading every day has many benefits”) followed by an elaboration, or our main supporting points. 0127 SASB North Since your agreement sentence comes directly before, you can start the thesis statement with, "The truth of this statement is shown by" then list the literary works and elements. This step and the previous step (selecting evidence) are actually best done at the same time, since selecting your evidence and defining the focus of your paper depend upon each other.

Teaching Elementary School Students To Be Effective Writers Coursework, To Kill A Mockingbird Creative Writing Prompts Essay, Writers Block Meme Research, Essay Writing Exercises Pdf Article, Instruction Writing How To Make A Cup Of Tea Dissertation, What Kind Of Music Helps You Sleep Thesis, Why Can't I Write Well Anymore Coursework, Ielts Writing Task 2 On Health Article, How To Write A Dedication Page For A Project Research,