Thesis Statements

Here are my (albeit sloppy) proposed thesis statements for W;t. There are many important formal elements in this poem, but these are the ones that stood out to me.


[Policy]: Vivian's formal diction shows her complete devotion to her work, but she finds that words fail her when it matters most because she regrets not having worked with compassion and love.

[Definition]: Although it is not a prominent part of the play, the minimalist setting is a medium for major character development for Vivian, as shown through internal monologues and meaningful conversations.

[Comparison]: It is true that Vivian and Susie are very different characters at the beginning of the play, but the characters of both Jason and Susie show different aspects of Vivian's character as her progression is shown through flashbacks and conversations.

[Evaluation]: Each of the characters went into their careers because of their passion for the work, but Vivian and Jason through their selfishness and Susie through her compassion show that the most meaningful careers are created when done with love and goodness.

[Causal]: Although she found pride in her career, Vivian came to see at the end of her life that true joy comes through her relationships with others as she began to form and cherish true relationships.

Staking a Claim

Well, this is a bit of an exercise. We'll see how I fair. It's a little up in the air at the moment. Wish me luck! Constructive criticism is thoroughly welcome, as this is not my strongest area of writing! (My strongest, sadly, is rather unusable in most scenarios.)  I've chosen to sort of stick to the topic of education and knowledge in these, just exploring the same kind of idea using the different types of claims we learned about.

Meet This Thesis.

Wow, that was a terrible pun and an awful title.  Oh well!

Thesis statements are important. ßNot a great thesis statement for the blog post, but it gets the job done and this is informal writing so it doesn’t matter and I can do what I want.  Even spel things wrong.  No one’s mad! 

Dr. Burton’s slideshow was pretty sweet and helped me get a grip on thesis statements.  It also gave me more motivation to write my paper for American Lit that I’ve put off for a month, so that’s also a win.  It was good for me to try to think of ways to make W;t something that smart people would argue about because it forced me to think about things actively instead of just let the literature happen to me, ya know?