1. Thesis Statement Construction:
Ingredients for an Effective Statement of Purpose
By Pat Schroyer

2. Characteristics of a good thesis statement:
1. A good thesis is specific and clear.
A good thesis deals with restricted, “bite-size” issues.
Restrict the thesis so that you may explore it fully in your paper.

3. 2. A good thesis statement proves something or takes a stand on an issue.
A good thesis proves something, and the rest of the paper is a defense of that thesis. Therefore, be sure there is another side to the thesis that someone else could prove.

4. Examples: Better: Poor:
To please a varied Elizabethan audience, William Shakespeare included many forms of the supernatural in his play Macbeth.
Poor:
William Shakespeare wrote many great plays and poems during the Elizabethean Era.

5. Mark Twain wrote many plays and short stories.
Good or Bad?
The life of Samuel Clemens greatly impacted his short stories and novels, especially Huckleberry Finn and “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calvaras County.”
Mark Twain wrote many plays and short stories.

6. 3. A good writer states his or her thesis in one carefully worded sentence.

7. 4. A good thesis statement contains a present or past, simple tense main verb that is an action, not a linking verb.
Use “literary present” tense to discuss literature.
The tense of the thesis indicates the primary tense chosen for the rest of the paper.
Choose a strong verb.

8. Examples:
Robert Browning was a significant Victorian poet who authored “My Last Duchess,” a dramatic monologue.
Victorian writer Robert Browning immortalizes the dramatic monologue and captures the essence of the Renaissance in his poem, “My Last Duchess.”

9. A good thesis statement contains “so whatness.”
Read your thesis. Ask yourself, “So what?” Your thesis should answer that question.

10. 6. Check your thesis for the following components:
Name of the author
Name of the primary source
Genre of the primary source
Action verb
“So whatness”
Sense of “proving” something

11. Sample Thesis Statements
In Paradise Lost John Milton transforms Satan into a tragic hero to make him attractive, thus disguising evil and deceiving the reader to make his point, just as Satan has deceived man since his conception.

12. Sample Thesis Statement
Specifically, in plays such as The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, and Macbeth, Shakespeare relies on instrumental and vocal melodies to enhance scenes otherwise restricted by words alone to convey his desired effect to his audience.

13. Sample Thesis Statement
Endowing Victor Frankenstein and the monster with certain aspects and qualities that juxtapose the characters in Frankenstein, Mary Shelley bonds them together as complements of a single being.

14. Sample Thesis Statement
These poems and others about the religions and social order of Scotland reveal Burns’s true feelings about life in Scotland, dispelling the myth that he was among the proudest men ever to be a Scot.

15. Sample Thesis Statement
By juxtaposing the mighty but fault-ridden Round Table Knights and the strong-willed Grail Achiever in The Once and Future King, T. H. White demonstrates that the prerequisite for the retrieval of the Grail is not secular achievements or virtues but absolute spiritual purity.