Breaking Down the Thesis

Break it down!

Breaking down the thesis for a longer essay



Things to remember about the introduction/direction sentences


  1. Hook/intro 2. Thesis 3-5. Direction sentences

   b. A great thesis naturally breaks down into direction sentences


   c. Direction sentences are more focused than your thesis sentences. They should be very specific.


   d. Direction sentences will be almost exactly the same as your topic sentences for your body paragraphs.    Therefore, they should act like mini-thesis statements.  They SHOULD NOT BE PLOT SUMMARY.  THEY SHOULD HAVE A WHY, OR CAUSAL STATEMENT!


   e. You should not repeat yourself, or give multiple examples of the same idea, for your direction sentences.   They should be distinct, different thoughts. (Example: In a paper that wants to show Chris is insane, you shouldn’t have three direction sentences that bring up different examples of how unprepared he was for the Alaska trip.)


     f. The direction sentences cannot be three separate things, they have to relate back to a single thesis. (A thesis such as “Chris McCandless is crazy, introverted, and monklike,” with direction sentences such as “McCandless is crazy because of x y and z,” “He’s introverted because he blah blah blah,” would not be appropriate.)

Examples:

      Even though both Edmond Dantes and Captain Ahab both seek revenge, Edmond is successful because he is more sane and patient. Ahab makes no effort to hide his motive to kill Moby Dick, but Edmond, on the other hand, conceals his identity and his plans by taking on new aliases. Ahab also relentlessly directs all of his efforts to killing Moby Dick without regard to the well being of himself and his crew as soon as he recovers from his wound. Edmond has more patience since he takes time to gain information on his friends and enemies and create a plan to get revenge when he gets out of jail.



     Both Captain Ahab and Garp from The World According to Garp achieve success in their respective professions, however, they are ultimately not satisfied with their lives because of past trauma that damaged their self worth. In Moby Dick, Ahab is able to kill many whales and captains numerous missions, whereas Garp authors a top-seller in The World According to Besenhaver. Ahab is unable to kill his nemesis Moby-Dick while leading the Pequod, where as Garp believes that the three novels he writes fail to pass the literary-level of his first ever piece, the short story, “The Pension Grillparzer.” Lastly, these two characters have defined reasons for the emptiness, namely, Garp constantly trying to break out of his mother’s shadow, and Ahab’s dismemberment.

Here's the link to our breaking down the thesis project