Questions?
“Gold Bug” Essay
Handout with the detailed assignment.
Particularly...
- Flexibility in what you write about, any thesis concerning a connection between race as portrayed in “The Gold Bug” and today should be OK
- Procedures and dates for turning this in
- Possible use in INTD 106 if you wish.
Thesis Statements
INTD 106 Examples
Suggest fixes (or at least directions for fixes if not exact wording) for the “Bad Theses” examples
“Wrong people won the American Revolution.” Rewrite to say what was “wrong,” and then further to focus on consequence instead of subjective right/wrong, for example “The American revolutionaries lacked experience governing an independent country, and therefore the United States shortly afterward fell into the nearly-disastrous War of 1812.”
“Author is clearly depressed” example. Maybe you’re lucky enough to have access to extensive research on the author and can actually prove that he was depressed, but more likely you should rephrase the thesis to talk about how you or other readers can draw lessons about depression from the novel, for example “Harding’s novel Tinkers accurately shows how depressed people struggle with their emotions while simultaneously seeking help.” You can support this with things other people have written about depression or your own experience, without needing to know the author’s private thoughts.
Your Own Examples
Try writing possible thesis statements for a “race in ’The Gold Bug’” essay. They may be ones someone actually plans to use, but don’t have to be.
Put them in this Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OvmgI66C0BU15oRGFrQLrvC1ZfXFK0TN0rulcXmDxFw/edit?usp=sharing
Discussion
A thesis statement obligates you to support all of the claims it makes.
Thesis statements with multiple claims are therefore dangerous: they obligate you to do more, and if you do it conscientiously the resulting essay may read like several essays pasted together, one for each claim in the thesis. So pick a single claim for your thesis.
If a thesis statement seems to make multiple claims but you feel it has to because the claims are inherently interconnected, see if you can rephrase the thesis around the interconnection. For example “Poe’s characterization of Jupiter creates a humorous reaction by readers, but also results in an underlying negative racialization” might become “by appealing to readers’ sense of humor, Poe’s characterization of Jupiter produces an underlying negative racialization” if your point is really that Jupiter’s role as a comic figure is an essential part of what makes him a negative racial caricature.
Thesis statements can definitely be more than one sentence long if that’s what it takes to make a complex point clear.
Thesis statements also need to be embedded in other introductory material that gives them context.
Key Points
A thesis is a specific statement (not a question)
A thesis must be debatable...
... and yet also defensible.
Next
Embedding thesis statements in contextual material.
They Say, I Say chapter 7.