Thesis Statements in Literary Analysis Papers Answer Questions
L204 Rogers Fall 2011
Thesis statement by Michael Clark, “Light and Darkness in ‘Sonny’s Blues’”:
To examine all of these facets of human existence [family reconciliation, Black heritage, central role of Art to
humanity] is a rather formidable undertaking in a short story, even in a longish short story such as this one.
Baldwin not only undertakes this task, but he does it superbly. One of the central ways that Baldwin fuses all of
these complex elements is by using a metaphor of childhood, which is supported by ancillary images of light and
darkness.
[Kennedy and Gioia, 680]
Answers the question, HOW does Baldwin accomplish the task of writing a short story that
succeeds in analyzing life’s complexity? WHAT formal tricks does he use and HOW do those
tricks work in the story to help him to explore that complexity?
Thesis statement by Susan Kim, “By Lantern Light: An Explication of a Passage in Poe’s ‘The
Tell-Tale Heart’”
Although Edgar Allan Poe has suggested in the first lines of his story “The Tell-Tale Heart” that the person who
addresses us is insane, it is only when we come to the speaker’s account of his preparations for murdering the old
man that we find his madness fully revealed.
Answers the question, WHICH passage reveals the narrator’s insanity and HOW does the
passage do this revealing?
Review Essay Thesis Statements Answer Questions Like These:

What Common Idea Unites These Different Books?

In What Different Ways Does Each Book Approach This Common Idea?

What’s significant or interesting about this Common Idea, even for people who haven’t read the books?
Review Essay Thesis Statement by Aaron DeRosa, “Analyzing Literature after 9/11”
It is this function [dealing with trauma] that best fits the projects of Kristiaan Versluys, Richard Gray, and Martin
Randall.Out of the Blue, After the Fall, and 9/11 and the Literature of Terror are some of the earliest book-length
attempts to construct compelling narratives that synthesize the disparate fictional accounts of 9/11 into stable
configurations. All three authors prescribe the engagement of alterity in some capacity for “proper mourning”
(Versluys 13) in order to appropriately demonstrate an “enactment of difference” between pre- and post-9/11
worlds (Gray 29).
What does this thesis statement look like schematically?
It is this function [__________________] that best fits the projects of _________________, _______________________,
Thesis Statements in Literary Analysis Papers Answer Questions
L204 Rogers Fall 2011
______________________. __________________________(book A),
_______________________(book B), and ____________________( book C) are book length attempts to _____________________________.
All three authors ______________________ in order to _______________________.
Review Essay Thesis Statement by Lewis MacLeod, “Common Places and Commonplace
Things: Modernism at Home on an Average Day”
These two books, in different ways, try to resituate the self-conscious radicalism of literary modernism in terms of
its under-acknowledged engagement with the commonplace. Modernism and the Locations of Literary Heritage
uses Victorian middlebrow heritage to establish the cultural context that produced and informed modernism
while Modernism and the Ordinary demonstrates how the provocative and apparently elevated aesthetics of
modernist unconventionality are ultimately grounded in “experiences that are not heightened” (4).
What does this thesis statement look like schematically?
These three books, in different ways, try to___________________________________________
_______________________________________________. _______________________(book A)
uses _____________________ to establish _________________________ while __________
_________(book B) demonstrates ______________________________.