Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill [163]
Note: this last version of the thesis is the one that would appear in the writer’s final paragraph, the product of qualifying and refining the paper’s claim by repeatedly confronting and assimilating complicating evidence. In effect, the Six Steps have produced a reasonably complete draft in outline form.
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Try This 11.3: Tracking a Thesis
As should be clear now, various versions of the thesis recur throughout a piece of writing, usually with increasing specificity, complication, and grammatical complexity. The four evolutions of the thesis statement on Educating Rita illustrate this pattern of recurrence clearly. One of the best ways to teach yourself how and where to locate statements of the thesis in your own writing is to track the thesis in a piece of reading. Use a highlighter to mark the evolutions. Where in the essay do you find the thesis? How has it changed in each recurrence? In response to what complication?
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FIGURE 11.4
Successive Revisions of a Thesis. An initial thesis about Educating Rita evolves through successive complications as it reexamines evidence in the film.
The Evolving Thesis in Outline Form: Superman
We borrow this example from the website of the First Year Writing Program at Ohio State University, for which we offer much thanks. Like the evolving thesis in Educating Rita, some of the various reformulations of the thesis would appear in the final draft.
Original Thesis:
“Superman is an unchanging icon because he stands for Truth, Justice, and the American way.”
Complicating Evidence:
Superman has made dramatic body-image changes in his “career.”
Revised Thesis: “Though Superman’s body-image has changed, his status as an icon and his message have remained steady.”
Complicating Evidence:
Older body-images are met with boredom and distaste by the new generation of viewers. He has become younger and more sexual.
Revised Thesis:
“The new young, sexy Superman liberates him from past images, and caters his message to a new, more sexually sophisticated generation of viewers.”
Complicating Evidence:
If Superman’s body-image changes so much, doesn’t this change his message automatically? What does his body-image say? Does his body speak loader than his message?
Revised Thesis:
“A young, sexy Superman liberates his image from a wholesome, community-oriented image and celebrates more explicitly a message of individuality and sexual power.”
Complicating Evidence:
It is the viewers who place these demands on Superman’s image. He is the “offspring” of consumers.
Revised Thesis:
“A younger and more sexualized generation of consumers has liberated Superman’s image from a wholesome, community-oriented image to reflect more readily its own values of individuality and sexual power.”
LOCATING THE EVOLVING THESIS IN THE FINAL DRAFT
Having achieved a final version of a thesis, what next? Why wouldn’t a writer just relocate the last and fullest statement of the thesis to his or her first paragraph and then prove it?
Usually it’s neither possible nor desirable to encapsulate in the opening sentences what it will take the whole paper to explain. The position articulated in the fully evolved thesis is typically too complex to be stated intelligibly and concisely in the introduction. If you approach an essay as an act of thinking, then the evolutions of the thesis record the history of your various changes in thinking as you encounter evidence. If your readers get to see these, they are far more likely to go along with you, literally to follow your trains of thought. Rather than imposing your conclusions, you will be sharing your thought process with the reader, which is what good writing does.
Normally, you lead (usually at the end of the first paragraph or at the beginning of the second) with the best version of your thesis you can come up with that will be understandable to your readers