Three Threads and a Thesis (3T&Ts) *
Meegan Kennedy
Florida State University
These must reflect an understanding of the material and a narrowly focused "point of entry" for analysis. You should choose very specific and material points in the text. Novels, for example, offer thousands of possibilities for subject matter, and your threads and thesis must each tackle only one at a time.
The Three Threads
The three threads you select can be virtually anything of importance (or that you think you can make important) that catches your eye in the piece. In particular, look for patterns, such as
a metaphor that recurs (people as packages in The Importance of Being Earnest)
or is unexpected within the context of the novel (the brain as a stomach, in The Mill on the Floss);
or an apparent conflict or contradiction in the terms that the text seems to be setting up (Is the novel sympathetic to its villain?).
Avoid what would be normative or expected in the genre: a recurrent theme of "blood" in a tragedy, for example, or the glorification of motherhood in an essay arguing for traditional roles for women.
The best way to prepare for this assignment is to keep a piece of paper next to you as you read to jot down ideas, tensions, repetitions, quirky thoughts, etc. (including useful page numbers). Or you may want to write notes in the back of your book. Either way, I urge you to underline in your text, to talk to yourself or to the text, author, characters by writing in the margins, highlighting main plot points or themes. Contrary to the belief that this takes time, it will save you time in the long run when you are writing responses or papers. You should get in the habit of reading everything with an eye to the "threads" you can find. Be interesting. Challenge yourself. Surprise yourself with your own intellectual capacity and wit. Have fun.
The Thesis
After you have developed a stimulating list of threads, writing the thesis is the next and most important step. Thesis statements, as you probably already know, are the central guiding ideas in a piece of writing. You want to develop analytic, argumentative claims about the material, rather than merely descriptive thesis statements. In other words, instead of
reporting on the text ("There is a pattern in the text, and that pattern is X."),
writing opinion pieces ("This author argues X, and I [dis]agree"),
or noting similarities or differences between Victorian culture and our own ("The Victorians believed X and we believe Y."),
I will expect you to analyze the material and argue about the significance of the pattern(s) you have discovered.
An analytic thesis statement will offer the following information and might take this form:
"Pattern X reveals Y about Z."
The Everyday Writer indicates that a good thesis statement must be (1) interesting, (2) concrete and specific, and (3) narrowly focused. A thesis must demonstrate that you've read the text. If you have done the reading, and the thesis doesn't make this clear, it's likely not a specific enough thesis. I recognize that you can't write a paper in your thesis statements, but in order to effectively convey your point in a single sentence your language must be very specific - not just "ideology" but what kind of ideology? Not just "negative" but negative in what way? Not just "contradicts itself" but what contradicts what, exactly? Ask yourself: Why? So what? Why does one of the threads you've identified (a pattern/character/ theme/system) operate the way it does, and what does that operation reveal? What structure does this behavior create? Who benefits from these patterns? What is revealed by what is left unsaid here? What do the surprises, even subtle ones, or tensions, frictions, or contradictions suggest when analyzed? Is a repetition or a pattern serving as a screen for something else? What does the insistence on a certain pattern suggest? Remember that an author chooses to make characters, situations, events happen in a certain way, and can choose to make anything happen. S/he can use any language to communicate this series of ideas. Why these particular events? Why these words? Why in this frame? (Why does Defoe let Crusoe run out of ink?)
Sample threads and how to push them to analysis
· "Warfare appears often in this poem about nature" does not tell us what the significance of that pattern is. Make a claim about how warfare operates. Explain why it is significant.
· I disagree with X" is not an argumentative claim about the text: why is X wrong and how? and what does this "error" reveal about the period? the author? the culture? etc.
· "X says A, I think we need to instead consider B." Why? What does the fact that X only considers A mean?
· A statement like "A shift in cultural values causes tension" asserts a relatively obvious position. Tie it to the piece you've read. What specifically is a shift here; why is that particular kind of shift revealing and important?
Evaluation
Your 3T&T will be evaluated on the following scale:
0: No clear evidence that the writer read or comprehended the piece; fails to fulfill assignment; makes erroneous claims about the piece or period.
1: Demonstrates that the writer read and understood the piece, but threads remain on the surface and thesis is descriptive, rather than analytic; narrates or provides narrative "plot" and no more; suggests analysis, but makes erroneous claims about the piece or period.
2: Suggests good understanding of the piece; discovers interesting threads; analyzes a theme or themes present; indicates an understanding of the period, author, issue, etc.; offers an appropriate theoretical framework for the claims.
3: Provides a sophisticated analysis of the piece; demonstrates exceptional insight into the material and/or the period, author, issue, etc.; shows conscious and appropriate choice of theoretical framework best suited to piece and claim.
Sample 3T&Ts
Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White
1. *The letters in the novel always carry bad news.
2. Marian's umbrella seems to be used like a man's cane.
3. Each of the sections ends in a dream.
4. In section I, each one of the women characters is called a "martyr" at least once.
5. The character Pesca altogether disappears in section II!
Thesis: Collins's use of letters as the means of conveying consistently tragic news indicates that the written word is a slippery and unreliable form of communication--a position that calls into question the authority of the text and even the law.
Sometimes I may ask you to provide more information with each thread:
Charles Dickens's David Copperfield
1. Dickens's characters seem to acquire lots of new names, especially when entering a new situation. For example, David is called "Brooks of Sheffield" by Mr. Murdstone's friend, "the little gent" at Murdstone and Grinby's warehouse, "Trotwood," by his aunt, "Daisy" by his friend Steerforth, and "Doady" by his first wife Dora (give page numbers in the edition we're using)
*2. Why does Dickens make Miss Mowcher a little person? Does this make David less or more likely to take her advice, than the advice he gets from his aunt or from Peggotty?
3. The novel seems filled with motherless children: David, Emily, Agnes, Dora. But there's also a surfeit of mothers. Although David's mother dies when he is very young, the novel provides him with several surrogate mothers, some more and some less suitable, and not all of whom remain in this role: his own mother (dies on p. X), Peggotty (gets married on p. X), Miss Murdstone (arrives on p. X; he leaves the household on p. X), Mrs. Micawber (first meets on p. X, departs for the colonies on p. X), his aunt Betsey Trotwood (he meets on p. X), and Dora's aunts Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa (he meets on p. X). Is Agnes a kind of "mother" to him, too?
Thesis: Because she is a "little person," Miss Mowcher exemplifies the vulnerability of the state of childhood - small, vulnerable, "a very helpless and defenceless little thing" - with which Dickens is here concerned, while she also provides the insight and voice of an adult observer who can offer, from experience, one of the morals of the novel: "Try not to associate bodily defects with mental." As a result she serves as a figure of the author, since the novel supposedly retells his own childhood memories in the more mature narrative voice of the child now grown.
* Thanks to Marlene Tromp of Denison University for her version of this exercise.