Unit 4 · Topic 4.2

4.2 Conclusions that bring an argument together

A conclusion makes an argument feel finished and whole. Beyond restating the thesis, it can explain why the argument matters in a bigger context, call readers to act, propose a solution, leave a lasting image, point out implications or circle back to the opening.

Key terms

conclusion
significance
call to action
implication

What a conclusion has to do

A conclusion ties the argument together so it feels finished. It may restate the thesis in fresh words, but strong conclusions do more: they tell readers what the argument adds up to and what to do or think next. The best ones leave readers with the feeling that the argument mattered.

Ways to conclude

Strategy	What it does	Example (written for this page)
Broader context	Shows the argument's significance beyond the immediate topic	Library fines are a small case of a bigger question: who public services are really for.
Connection	Links the issue to another idea or field	The same logic applies to school lunch debt.
Call to action	Asks readers to do something specific	Come to Tuesday's board meeting and ask for a vote.
Change in attitude	Asks readers to see something differently	Next time a student seems lazy, ask when they last slept.
Solution	Proposes a fix	Replace fines with automatic renewals and reminders.
Image	Leaves a picture in the reader's mind	A child walking back into a library she thought she'd been banned from.
Implications	Explains what follows if the argument is right	If fines don't work, other penalties deserve the same review.
Summary	Briefly gathers the main points	Fines raise little money, push families away and don't speed up returns.
Return to the opening	Echoes the introduction to complete a frame	Back to my sister at the bus stop, now waiting in daylight.

Beyond summary

A summary alone is a weak ending for a short essay, because the reader just read it. Restating the thesis word for word is weaker still. Try to add one new layer: why the issue matters, what follows from it, or what the reader should do. Don't introduce a brand-new argument that you haven't supported; a conclusion widens the view, it doesn't start a new fight.

Conclusions on timed essays

On the exam, two or three sentences is plenty. If time is short, a one-sentence conclusion is better than none, but don't sacrifice body paragraphs for it. A conclusion that places your argument in a broader context or explains its limits can also support the sophistication point (Row C) on the argument and synthesis essays, if the essay as a whole develops that thinking.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
Lincoln's closing in the Second Inaugural
Abraham Lincoln gave his Second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1865, when the Union was close to winning the Civil War. He ended: "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." Identify the strategies this conclusion uses and explain their effect.
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Situation: the war is nearly won, and many Northerners want to punish the South. Lincoln's purpose is to steer the nation toward reunion.
2. Step 2: Strategy 1, call to action: "let us strive on to finish the work we are in." The command is inclusive ("us").
3. Step 3: Strategy 2, change in attitude: "malice toward none" and "charity for all" ask a victorious audience to give up revenge.
4. Step 4: Strategy 3, image: "bind up the nation's wounds" pictures the country as an injured body that needs care.
5. Step 5: Strategy 4, broader context: the goal widens from the war to "a just and lasting peace" with "all nations."
6. Step 6: Effect: the conclusion turns the speech from looking back at the war to looking ahead at peace.
Answer: Model paragraph: Lincoln closes not with a victory celebration but with a set of instructions for peace. His call to action, "let us strive on," includes every listener in the work ahead, and the opening phrases, "malice toward none" and "charity for all," ask a nearly victorious North to give up the revenge many wanted. The image of binding "the nation's wounds" pictures the country as one injured body, so caring for the South becomes caring for the whole nation. By widening the goal to "a just and lasting peace" with "all nations," Lincoln leaves listeners thinking beyond the war itself.
Example 2
Rewriting a summary-only conclusion
Practice conclusion (written for this page) for an essay arguing that libraries should end overdue fines: "In conclusion, libraries should end overdue fines. Fines raise little money. They push families away. They don't make people return books faster." Revise it so it does more than summarize.
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Keep a one-clause reminder of the thesis, in fresh words.
2. Step 2: Add a broader context: what the issue says about the purpose of public services.
3. Step 3: End with a call to action or an image.
Answer: Revised: Ending fines would cost libraries little and win back the families who need them most. The debate is really about what a public library is for: protecting its books from late returns, or putting them in the hands of people who can't buy their own. Our city council votes on the library budget next month, and it should make the library free in practice as well as in name.

Common mistakes

Repeating the thesis word for word and calling it a conclusion.
Adding a new argument in the last paragraph that the essay never supported.
Starting with "In conclusion" and then only listing the body paragraphs again.
Skipping body-paragraph development to make time for a long conclusion.

On the exam

Writing questions often ask which sentence would best conclude a paragraph or passage by, for example, emphasizing a point or returning to an idea. Match the answer to the stated goal.
In Question 3, a conclusion that explains the broader significance or the limits of your argument can help, but only if the body paragraphs have built toward it.

Connected topics

Videos

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Check yourself

5 questions on 4.2 Conclusions that bring an argument together. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the somber shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it, every passing moment, with new marvels of coloring.

I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home. But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river's face; another day came when I ceased altogether to note them. Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should have looked upon it without rapture, and should have commented upon it, inwardly, after this fashion: This sun means that we are going to have wind to-morrow; that floating log means that the river is rising, small thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that; those tumbling 'boils' show a dissolving bar and a changing channel there; the lines and circles in the slick water over yonder are a warning that that troublesome place is shoaling up dangerously; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest is the 'break' from a new snag, and he has located himself in the very best place he could have found to fish for steamboats; that tall dead tree, with a single living branch, is not going to last long, and then how is a body ever going to get through this blind place at night without the friendly old landmark.

No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a 'break' that ripples above some deadly disease. Are not all her visible charms sown thick with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her professionally, and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself? And doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade?

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1883), Chapter 9. As a young man, Twain trained as a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River, which meant learning to "read" the water's surface for hidden dangers.

Question 1 of 5

The comparison to a doctor in paragraph 3 primarily serves to

Question 2 of 5

The passage ends with a question (whether a doctor "has gained most or lost most by learning his trade") rather than a direct statement. This choice most likely

In speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the State which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who pre-eminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. I ask only that what every self-respecting American demands from himself and from his sons shall be demanded of the American nation as a whole. Who among you would teach your boys that ease, that peace, is to be the first consideration in their eyes—to be the ultimate goal after which they strive? You men of Chicago have made this city great, you men of Illinois have done your share, and more than your share, in making America great, because you neither preach nor practice such a doctrine. You work yourselves, and you bring up your sons to work. . . . We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

I preach to you, then, my countrymen, that our country calls not for the life of ease but for the life of strenuous endeavor. The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations. If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world. Let us therefore boldly face the life of strife, resolute to do our duty well and manfully; resolute to uphold righteousness by deed and by word; resolute to be both honest and brave, to serve high ideals, yet to use practical methods. Above all, let us shrink from no strife, moral or physical, within or without the nation, provided we are certain that the strife is justified, for it is only through strife, through hard and dangerous endeavor, that we shall ultimately win the goal of true national greatness.

Theodore Roosevelt, then governor of New York, "The Strenuous Life," a speech to the Hamilton Club in Chicago, April 10, 1899. Paragraphs 1 and 2 come from the opening of the speech and paragraph 3 is its final paragraph. In the omitted middle, Roosevelt argued that the United States should take an active role abroad, including keeping control of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War.

Question 3 of 5

The final paragraph is most similar to the opening in that both

Question 4 of 5

Compared with the opening, the final paragraph widens Roosevelt's argument mainly by

Question 5 of 5

The sentence beginning "If we stand idly by" (paragraph 3) appeals to the audience mainly by

0 of 5 answered