your papers, here are a few things to double-check:

• Is it properly headed?
• Does your Works Cited page contain the proper information?
• Do you have more than one block quotation (for this assignment you shouldn’t need any)?
  • Remember that you are explaining the text to your audience; large quotations mean your readers have to dig through the to find the relevant information. Do them a favor: cut the information down to only the necessary bits and integrate them with your explanations

If your paper does not meet these requirements, check the links above for more information or go to the OWL at Purdue and dig around.

Just a quick reminder:

You should spend most of your time working out the organization and collection of evidence, ensuring that each of your points have proper support. Email a copy of your outline to me this weekend; I’ll give you feedback if necessary. Once you have that squared away, make a copy of the outline file, rename it “rough draft,” and turn your major points into paragraphs, add an introduction and conclusion, transitions between the paragraphs, and you’re all set.

These rough drafts are due Monday. We’ll do a peer review then.

If you have questions at any point in this process, send me an email or post a comment below.

…thought, indeed, is a ceaseless process of definition. It is the business of Art to give things shape. Anyone who takes no delight in the firm outline of an object, or in its essential character, has no artistic sense. He cannot even be nourished by Art. Like Ephraim, he feeds upon the East wind, which has no boundaries.

—Vance Palmer

Hey! The essays are starting to take shape! We spent today in the computer lab typing up outlines.

A few tips based on what I saw today:

Don’t worry about perfecting your thesis statement at this point! We are still in the planning stage, so just get it down (making sure it is an argument) and check it often as you gather support for your points. Change it as necessary, but don’t worry if the phrasing isn’t just right.

Your thesis statement must be an argument. At the beginning of this week, we discussed the trick of using questions from your journals to create a thesis statement. If you have a question at the top of your page, do not forget to work on the formulation of an answer as you collect evidence and patterns. Because, as you know, a question is a question and not a statement. One of you noted the recursion in the poem “A Warning to Children” and wondered if it applied to Hamlet. The question, then, was this:

How does recursion in Hamlet affect the lives of the characters?

But this, my friends, is not a statement. By answering this (cool) question, he formulated this thesis:

The recurrence of different problems and situations in Hamlet has caused some of the main characters to spiral downwards into self-destruction.

Is it perfect? Nope. Is it an argument? Definitely, because it raises all kinds of other questions that need to be clarified:

• Which characters?
• What situations?
• Why is the spiral downwards?
• Why “self-destruction”? Are they doing it to themselves?

The answers to these questions become the major points in support of the argument. Each of these answers may raise more questions to be answered with arguments…Hmm. Speaking of recursion…. The only way to end the cycle is to get to answers that can be logically answered by quotations from the text. There is an example of this below.

Make sure your major points are arguments that support your thesis. The trick is to divide each argument into as many smaller arguments as necessary to make your thesis clear to your audience. This can be tricky to get the hang of, and is what a writer spends most of his or her time on when composing an essay. Maybe some more excerpts from an outline written today would help:

Thesis: The masks we wear to hide ourselves can take us over, resulting in a loss of identity. Both Hamlet and Ophelia put on false personas that leads to their demise.

Good so far, the thesis uses the language of Dunbar’s poem (with a nod to Eliot’s) in order to explain the action in Hamlet. It is two sentences long, but the second focuses the argument to the topic at hand, making it the thesis of this paper. The first sentence is a more general argument used to draw the audience in and give them a reason to read further (remember our ethos discussion?).

V. Ophelia goes insane after her father’s death. She has lost her “puppet master” and isn’t sure how to act.

This sentence elaborates on one part of the argument—specifically, Ophelia’s demise. It is an argument because it incorporates part of the text (Polonius’ death, Ophelia’s actions) with the author’s opinion, which needs to be supported further.

Again, this is an elaboration on one part (Ophelia’s drowning) of the argument (V) above, incorporating something from the story (Ophelia’s drowning) and the author’s insight (it is a metaphorical, emotional, drowning).

At this point, the author of this essay should support her point with evidence from the text, as there is no way to make this more specific without becoming absurd. She lists the following as support:

She plans to explain the poem “Not Waving but Drowning” earlier in the text, which allows her at this point to rely on her audience’s understanding of a metaphorical drowning. The author should plan to include a quotation or two from Hamlet to support this claim in addition to that from the poem.

The next step:

If you were unable to finish your outline in class today (many were not), try to finish up tonight. I have scheduled the computer lab tomorrow, but I would like to give you all time to review one another’s work before you write your rough drafts this weekend.

Quick reminder that you’ll be presenting your proposals in class on Monday. I want to emphasize that this is not a stand-in-front-of-the-class-and-read-from-notecards sort of thing; you’ll remain sitting, explain your potential thesis and the support you have, the research you still need to do, and the class will provide suggestions for further connections/evidence and questions about your argument.

How are they coming? Send me an email or post a comment below if you have a question.

Here’s a quick question to ask of your proposed (hypo)thesis ((I’m using The Stranger by Albert Camus and Hamlet so I don’t step on any connections you may be considering, but the format should be the same.)):

Is it something I need to prove (that’s good), or something that just happens in the texts (that’s bad)?

Bad (hypo)thesis ((go sit in the corner.)): Hamlet and Meursault both isolate themselves from the rest of society, commit murder, and accept a death by the hand of another.

While this is a neat connection, it provides little insight into the texts—merely provides comparison. For a better comparison, I looked into how each views his death and why he accepts it as he does:

Better (hypo)thesis: On the night of Meursault’s execution, he realizes the “gentle indifference of the universe,” while Hamlet notes that there’s “special providence in the fall of a sparrow.” Though their paths are quite different, both Hamlet and Meursault find a kind of solace in the inevitability their deaths; Hamlet is resigned to divine providence while Meursault finally welcomes the absurdity of life and death.

This connection provides better insight into the characters’ motivations and will elicit questions for further explanation (is Hamlet really religious? what does “absurd” mean in this context? how are their paths different?), which will be addressed in the body of the essay. Remember that your theses are tentative at this point; they need not be perfect (this one certainly isn’t), but only to provide a starting point for further study and elucidation.

After your (hypo)thesis you should include as much support as you have discovered, any resources (or parts of the works) you still need to mull over, as well as any problems you foresee in the process.