What is a Thesis Statement?

What is a thesis statement?

A thesis statement is a brief (typically, one sentence) formulation of your essay’s argument. It identifies (and determines) the essay’s focus. Ideally, your essay includes nothing outside the thesis statement’s scope. Further, every idea in your essay should relate back to your thesis statement. When making an argument about a literary work, a thesis statement offers a claim about the text or some aspect of it.

What characteristics make a good thesis statement?

• Argumentative

A thesis statement offers an interpretive claim with which other readers might disagree. It proposes an inference that is not self-evident. A paper that is not argumentative consists almost entirely of plot summary, character description, or expositions of the author’s formal technique, and therefore contributes only what is already known (about the text).

• Arguable

A thesis statement must be arguable using evidence provided in the literary text. In contrast, statements of opinion or hypothetical examples ungrounded in the text’s language are not arguable as such.

• Relevant

A relevant thesis grapples with themes, problems, and/or ideas active in the text. An irrelevant thesis statement would be one that the text does not authorize, e.g., the industrial revolution in Shakespeare’s As You Like It.

• Narrow

A thesis statement accounts for the length of the assignment. Since we only write short essays in Sophomore English, your thesis statement should be very narrow, e.g., focused on a specific theme or idea as it is expressed in localized passages (rather than the literary work in its totality).

• Concise

Readers should be able to understand your argument after reading your thesis statement once. Your thesis statement should consist only of the essential elements of your argument, formulated with the fewest number of words. If your thesis is long, wordy, or convoluted, readers will struggle to follow your meaning.

• Compelling

Thesis statements should answer the “so what?” question. The strongest thesis statements identify a difficulty in the text, e.g., contradictions, paradoxes, instances of irony, surprising connections, or revelations. The difficulty of such points indicates that interpretive work is to be done!

• Original

A thesis statement offers a claim that heretofore has not been offered. While class discussion (or Internet sources) can help you brainstorm and test ideas, a thesis statement that retreads ground covered in these fora risks repeating previously stated observations and ideas.

Hint: Oftentimes it’s a good idea to create a thesis statement that contains tension. This tension can be achieved by using a sentence structure like “Although X, Y” or “While A, B.” Using this sentence structure will ensure your thesis is argumentative: the dependent clause (“X” or “A” in the templates) establishes the idea to which your argument responds, and the independent clause (“Y” or “B” in the template) formulates your argumentative response to that idea. See below Sample Thesis Statement #2 (and, to a lesser degree, #4) for examples of this structure.

What should you avoid in writing a thesis?

• Using words like “good” and “bad” or “positive” and “negative”

These words resist stable meanings—they are vague and relative concepts that generate unstable arguments. Instead, pin down what you really mean when you feel inclined to use words like “positive” and “negative.”

• Relying on the concept of difference

Avoid a thesis statement that uses the word “different” (e.g., “Jane Eyre and Blanche Ingram represent different models of femininity.”). Instead, make a claim about the function, effect, or meaning of that difference. Define that difference (e.g., “Situated as an alternative to marriage to Blanche Ingram, Rochester’s partnership with Jane Eyre defies nineteenth-century social expectations for romance.”).

• Splitting a thesis with the word “and”

A thesis that uses the word “and” is typically making two arguments; therefore, your essay will be divided into two distinct sections, rather than comprise a cohesive whole. Try to articulate the relationship between these two claims, and produce a unified, evolving argument.

• Discussing either authorial intention (“Poe was trying to…” or “Mason attempted to…”) or readers’ response to the text (“… gives readers a better understanding of…” or “… allows readers to better visualize/sympathize with/etc…”)

Neither authorial intention nor readers’ responses may be convincingly determined through analysis of evidence within the text.

Sample Thesis Statements:

• Through pivotal interactions with the narrator, the physical setting in “The Yellow Wallpaper” plays an antagonistic role that suggests the psychologically traumatic effects that paternalistic captivity exercises on women.
• While Bradbury’s story appears to illustrate a utopian future of technological innovation, the desolation of the story’s setting expresses technology’s capacity to ravage ecological systems.
• In blending the motifs of nature’s sublimity and imminent political revolution, Shelley’s “Mont Blanc” represents late Romantic poetry’s commitment to anti-authoritarian political ideology.
• In these poems, Parker’s convergences of gender, class, and race implies that the self is defined not by essences but by intersectionality.