Observation
+
Complication
+
Significance
The
Three-Part
Thesis
Statement
Purpose of the Thesis
 The
thesis, usually expressed in one or two
sentences, is the central, organizing claim
of your paper.
 Because each paragraph’s job is to drive
an argument forward by proving the
thesis, the thesis largely determines the
type of paper you get to write.
 If your claim is complex, you have the
option of picking the best arguments for
your strong paper and having a lot to talk
about.
Purpose Continued
 Your
thesis will almost certainly change as
you look more closely at your quotes
while writing... This is a good thing, usually
leading to a more complex, arguable,
and significant central idea.
 Before you turn your paper in, ALWAYS
check to make sure that your thesis
matches the argument that you’ve
ended up writing! If your essay went in an
unexpected direction, revise your thesis
to fit the essay that you wrote.
BASIC THESIS GENERATOR
1. Observation: what you’ve noticed in the text
Specific strategy, literary device(s),
and/or pattern
2. Complication: how O works/is used/changes
What that device, strategy, or pattern
does in the text
3. Significance: How O + C together contribute
to the author/text’s larger message, reveal
larger tensions or concerns, etc
So What? Why is this important? O
+ C reveals/suggests/disproves/etc…
Evolving Thesis Statements: O + C
•In
Melville’s The Tartarus of Maids, images of dead
flatness, whiteness, and blankness
Observation: pattern/device
•emphasize the similarities
between female factory
workers and the homogenous paper products
Complication: creates analogy
Significance: MISSING
Evolving Thesis Statements: C + S
Observation: MISSING
•Similarities
between female factory workers and the
homogenous paper products
Complication: creates analogy
•suggest
that industrialization dangerously replaces
vital human reproduction with lifeless industrial
production.
Significance: reveals historical
condition and its hidden effects
Evolving Thesis Statements: O + S
•In
Melville’s The Tartarus of Maids, images of dead
flatness, whiteness, and blankness
Observation: pattern/device
Complication: MISSING
•suggest
that industrialization dangerously replaces
vital human reproduction with lifeless industrial
production.
Significance: reveals historical
condition and its hidden effects
Three-Part (O + C + S) Thesis
•In
Melville’s The Tartarus of Maids, images of dead
flatness, whiteness, and blankness
Observation: pattern/device
•emphasize the similarities
between female factory
workers and the homogenous paper products
Complication: creates analogy
•thereby suggesting
that industrialization
dangerously replaces vital human reproduction with
lifeless industrial production.
Significance: reveals historical
condition and its hidden effects
INITIAL THESIS—
WHAT’S MISSING?
 Behn
critiques slavery by having the
narrator inadvertently turn the subject of
Oroonoko into the subject of consumerism
just as slavery turns men into commodities.
INITIAL THESIS—
WHAT’S MISSING?
 Behn
critiques slavery by having the narrator
inadvertently turn the subject of Oroonoko into
the subject of consumerism just as slavery turns
men into commodities.
•#1—More specifics on the literary device/strategy
•#2—Complication: HOW device/strategy actually
works
•#3—more specifics about WHY this vague “critique” is
important, or what exactly this shift is critiquing.
•#4 – Oroonoko wasn’t italicized as the title not
character!
REVISED THESIS
 Early
in Oroonoko, ambiguity of subject, tone, and
pronoun dramatize how language transforms living
creatures into property, revealing the hidden
complicity of consumerism in the visible economic
alchemy of chattel slavery.
 √ More specifics on the literary devices/strategies
 √ How Behn actually uses those devices/strategies
 √ More specific WHY Behn uses that device, the
“so what” question
Language Problems
Behn uses ambiguous language
the changing of
things,
showing the
language
slavery’s evils.
to show
people into
power of
in
Language Problems: Revised
Early in Oroonoko, ambiguity in subject, tone, and
syntax dramatize
Behn uses ambiguous language
to show
how language transforms living creatures into
the changing of
people into
property, revealing the hidden complicity of
things, showing the power of
consumerism in
language in
the visible economic alchemy of chattel slavery.
slavery’s evils.
To Sum It Up:
 Thesis
statements evolve. A thesis with only one or
two of the full three is not “bad.” It hasn’t been built
up to its optimal level of insight, but that one part is
still useful for later evolutions.
 Keep revising your thesis to match the essay you’re
writing and checking to make sure that your essay
matches your thesis.