Blog Post #10 Thesis Statement Revision

Prompt: Carefully read the passage from “Dream Child; a Reverie,” paying special attention to descriptive details and sentence structure. Then, write an essay in which you analyze how Charles Lamb’s style contributes to his portrayal of his “dream children,” his grandmother, and his own childhood.

Initial Thesis Statement: Lamb through the story “Dream Children; a Reverie” depicts that grandmother and children as people who the narrator wishes to be someday as he uses powerful imagery to describe character, allusions that relate with the overall character, and diction that create the positive atmosphere in the story.

ARGUMENT/FOCUS   

_No_Does my thesis statement address each part of the essay question?

_No_ Is the point I'm making one that would generate discussion and argument, or is it one

that would leave people asking, “So what?"

_Yes _ Have I focused on an interesting contradiction, tension or paradox between two things?

Example: “Although the escalation of violence in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men eventually results in two deaths, it is through violence that compassion is revealed when George, in a violent but merciful act, saves Lenny from cruel mob justice.”

_Yes__ Is my thesis too vague? Too general? Should I focus on some more specific aspect of my

topic?

__Yes_ Does my thesis deal directly with the topic at hand, or is it a declaration of my personal

feelings (“I think”/ “I feel” statements)?

LANGUAGE

_No__ Does my thesis indicate the direction of my argument? Does it suggest a structure for

my paper?

__No_ Is the language in my thesis vivid and clear? Have I structured my sentence so that the

important information is in the main clause? Have I used subordinate clauses to

house less important information? Have I used parallelism to show the relationship

between parts of my thesis? In short, is this thesis the very best sentence that it can be?

                                     No__  Is the thesis statement written as a complex sentence?

Revised Thesis Statement:  With a more humanistic approach, Lamb depicts the “dream children”, his grandmother, and his childhood with both a tone of gracefulness as well as a slight edge of darkness mainly through his use of spiritual description and cumulative syntax; only his use of these devices through this manner has allowed the reader to feel the humanistic complexity within this presented story.  

Revision Process: When observing my initial thesis statement, I find that it carried less argumentative diction, therefore resulting in a weaker statement. Moreover, I stated my main points directly without forming a sense of complexity within the process; the points did not produce any thought within my reader, when they read this thesis, they would ask: So What? To avoid this “So what?” question, I used the onion technique that I learned in the Sophomore year of my high school career. This technique involved writing a thesis statements, but asking “so what?” for each question. I kept questioning my thesis statement until I arrived at an optimal one. This was the revision process I used to write my revised thesis statement.