Unit 2 · Topic 2.5

2.5 Finding a writer's thesis

A thesis is the main claim a whole text sets out to prove. Sometimes it's stated in one clear sentence, called a thesis statement; other times it's implied or spread across the text, and you have to piece it together by reading the whole thing.

Key terms

thesis
main claim
explicit thesis
implicit thesis

The thesis is the claim everything else serves

A text can contain many claims, but only one is the thesis: the overarching claim that the others support. To find it, ask what the whole text is trying to get readers to believe or do. A sentence that only explains part of the argument is a supporting claim, not the thesis.

Keep three things apart: the topic (what the text is about), the purpose (what the writer wants the text to do) and the thesis (the position the writer defends). For a speech about library fines, the topic is fines, the purpose might be to persuade a city council, and the thesis is "The library should end overdue fines." Reading questions often include a wrong answer that names the topic or the purpose instead of the claim. Titles and closing paragraphs are good places to check your guess, because writers often restate the thesis there.

Where a thesis can be

At the start: the writer states the thesis, then spends the rest of the text proving it.
At the end: the writer leads readers through reasons and evidence, then arrives at the thesis as a conclusion.
Spread out: the thesis is split across two or three sentences, or stated in pieces that add up.
Implied: the writer never states it directly, and you have to infer it from the whole text. Satire and personal essays often work this way.

Finding an implied thesis

When no single sentence does the job, build the thesis yourself.

Sum up each paragraph in a few words.
Ask what all of those summaries are trying to prove together.
Write that as one sentence with a clear position.
Test it: does every paragraph support your sentence? If one doesn't, adjust it.

Watch out for irony

In satire, the writer says one thing and means another. Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal (1729) seems to argue that poor Irish families should sell their babies as food for the rich. That's the surface claim, and it is meant to shock. The real thesis is the opposite: that Ireland's poor were being treated as if they were livestock, and that the people in power were ignoring practical, humane solutions. If you take a satirist's surface claim as the thesis, every answer that follows will be wrong.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
An explicit thesis that previews the argument
On June 16, 1858, accepting the Illinois Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, Abraham Lincoln said: "'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved,—I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other." State Lincoln's thesis and explain how it points to the rest of his argument.
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Find the main claim: the nation cannot stay permanently half slave and half free; it will become all one or all the other.
2. Step 2: Notice how it's built. Lincoln opens with a familiar biblical saying his audience would accept, then applies it to the nation.
3. Step 3: Notice the preview. "All one thing, or all the other" sets up two possible futures, which signals that the speech will explain which way the country is heading and why it matters.
Answer: Lincoln's thesis is that the United States cannot last permanently "half slave and half free" and will eventually become "all one thing, or all the other." Because the thesis frames the choice as two futures, it tells listeners that the rest of the speech will explain which way the country is moving and what they must do to stop slavery from spreading.
Example 2
Inferring Swift's real thesis
Near the end of A Modest Proposal (1729), Swift's speaker says: "Therefore let no man talk to me of other expedients," and then lists the solutions he claims to reject, among them "Of taxing our absentees at five shillings a pound," and "Of teaching landlords to have at least one degree of mercy towards their tenants." What is Swift's implied thesis?
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Recognize the irony: the speaker's proposal to eat children is monstrous, so Swift can't mean it literally.
2. Step 2: Look at what the speaker brushes aside. The "other expedients" are realistic reforms: taxing landowners who live abroad and treating tenants with mercy.
3. Step 3: Infer the real position: Swift wants readers to take those reforms seriously.
4. Step 4: Combine the target and the solution in one sentence.
Answer: Swift's implied thesis: Ireland's poverty comes from the greed and indifference of the people with power, especially landlords who take wealth out of the country, and the practical reforms his speaker mockingly dismisses, such as taxing absentee landlords and showing tenants mercy, are exactly what Ireland needs.

Common mistakes

Assuming the first sentence is always the thesis. Many writers build toward it.
Stating the topic ("the essay is about slavery") instead of the claim about it.
Taking an ironic or satirical claim at face value.
Choosing a strong supporting claim that only explains one paragraph.

On the exam

"Which of the following best states the main claim of the passage?" is a common reading question. The right answer fits every paragraph, not just the most memorable one.
Getting the writer's thesis right is the foundation of a strong Question 2 essay, because you're explaining how the writer's choices serve that purpose.

Connected topics

Videos

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Check yourself

4 questions on 2.5 Finding a writer's thesis. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it,—all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war,—seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, delivered at the U.S. Capitol on March 4, 1865, in the final weeks of the Civil War, before a crowd that included officials, soldiers and ordinary citizens. Lincoln had been reelected; the Union was close to victory.

Question 1 of 4

Which of the following best expresses the main claim of the address, which Lincoln implies rather than states in a single sentence?

(1) Across the country, more high schools are adding community service hours to their graduation requirements. (2) Some students see the hours as a chore to check off, while others discover causes they care about for years. (3) Community service is a requirement at many schools.

(4) Required service exposes students to problems they might never otherwise see. (5) When I volunteered at the Eastside food pantry for my sophomore hours, I met families who worked full time and still could not afford groceries. (6) That experience changed how I think about hunger in my own town.

(7) Still, a requirement only works if students have real choices. (8) A student forced to file papers in an office for twenty hours learns little except how to watch the clock. (9) Schools that let students pick from many kinds of projects, including ones they design themselves, see more students keep volunteering after graduation.

Written for this practice set: a student's draft of an argument essay answering the question, "Should high schools require community service for graduation?"

Question 2 of 4

Suppose the writer adopts the thesis "Schools should require community service, but only if students can choose projects that matter to them." Which of the following best describes how paragraph 3 relates to that thesis?

After considering the historic page, and viewing the living world with anxious solicitude, the most melancholy emotions of sorrowful indignation have depressed my spirits, and I have sighed when obliged to confess, that either nature has made a great difference between man and man, or that the civilization, which has hitherto taken place in the world, has been very partial. I have turned over various books written on the subject of education, and patiently observed the conduct of parents and the management of schools; but what has been the result? a profound conviction, that the neglected education of my fellow creatures is the grand source of the misery I deplore; and that women in particular, are rendered weak and wretched by a variety of concurring causes, originating from one hasty conclusion. The conduct and manners of women, in fact, evidently prove, that their minds are not in a healthy state; for, like the flowers that are planted in too rich a soil, strength and usefulness are sacrificed to beauty; and the flaunting leaves, after having pleased a fastidious eye, fade, disregarded on the stalk, long before the season when they ought to have arrived at maturity. One cause of this barren blooming I attribute to a false system of education, gathered from the books written on this subject by men, who, considering females rather as women than human creatures, have been more anxious to make them alluring mistresses than rational wives; and the understanding of the sex has been so bubbled by this specious homage, that the civilized women of the present century, with a few exceptions, are only anxious to inspire love, when they ought to cherish a nobler ambition, and by their abilities and virtues exact respect.

I am aware of an obvious inference: from every quarter have I heard exclamations against masculine women; but where are they to be found? If, by this appellation, men mean to inveigh against their ardour in hunting, shooting, and gaming, I shall most cordially join in the cry; but if it be, against the imitation of manly virtues, or, more properly speaking, the attainment of those talents and virtues, the exercise of which ennobles the human character, and which raise females in the scale of animal being, when they are comprehensively termed mankind—all those who view them with a philosophical eye must, I should think, wish with me, that they may every day grow more and more masculine.

Mary Wollstonecraft, an English writer and teacher, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), from the introduction. Many popular books of the time, most of them written by men, advised that girls be educated mainly to please. Some text is omitted between paragraphs 1 and 2.

Question 3 of 4

Which of the following best states the main claim Wollstonecraft makes in paragraph 1?

Question 4 of 4

Which of the following best describes how Wollstonecraft presents her thesis in the passage?

0 of 4 answered