Writing Essays - Using Examples to Support Your Thesis

After you've written out a great thesis for your essay, you must give it substance and credibility by supporting it thoroughly with: stories examples Reasoning Why? Because if you've got lousy support for your fantastic thesis with weakly developed stories, poorly worded examples, and sketchy reasoning, you'll be lucky to get a C- on your essay!

So let's talk about examples, and what makes good example support for your essays. To help us, we'll use George Orwell's widely popular essay, Politics and the English Language l/orwell46.htm l/orwell46.htm

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine- gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

Those sentences show the first of three main traits of good examples: –generalize, narrow, introduce –present specific, described things –link to keywords/ideas of generalization or thesis

Generalize: When you generalize, you make a broad statement about a group of things, such as "trees" or "feelings." The group "trees" contains many subgroups, such as birch, maple, and oak, each of which has their own different specific examples. The group "feelings" also contains several subgroups, such as love, fear, and admiration, each of which has their own different specific examples. Generalizing about trees would be something like, "Trees are a valuable source of oxygen and aesthetic pleasure, and some trees are better than others as a source for both." That generalization would be followed by examples of specific types of trees, which we can see because of the narrowing that is included with "and some trees." Generalizing about feelings would be something like, "We start to understand our feelings after we reach age forty, especially those about our family relationships." That generalization would probably be followed by examples of specific types of family relationships, which we can see because of the narrowing that is included with "especially those."

The sentences above from paragraph thirteen of Orwell's essay begin with this generalization: In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

Narrow… The phrase political speech and writing identifies a large group of things that is being narrowed to the quality called the defense of the indefensible, which is still a very general quality, a generality. The next sentence begins with "Things like," continuing the narrowing and introducing some less general-but still general-statements: Things like –the continuance of British rule in India, –the Russian purges and deportations, –the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties.

Note that several different short phrases can be used to introduce both general and specific examples, for instance: things like; like for instance such as for example the following once; one day occasionally this is called thus

But here Orwell isn't ready to present the specific examples, yet, so he uses the next sentence to narrow his idea even a bit further- –Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. This is the low-category level of ideas that Orwell wanted to get to: "euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness." And now he's ready to present specific, described things that are examples.

Present specific, described things. In the paragraph we're dealing with, Orwell is through narrowing and introducing, and he starts presenting specific, described things that are examples of euphemism: –Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification [a euphemism]. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers [a euphemism]. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements [a euphemism]. Specific things. Named and described. Simply presented, with enough details to form a mental image, such as, "villages are bombarded from the air," "huts set on fire with incendiary bullets," and "shot in the back of the head." As shown. Enough said.

Link to keywords of generalization or thesis. You simply haven't handled your example well if it's not linked to a generalization. You must use keywords or ideas the reader can see are linked to a generalization that precedes the described specifics or that are linked directly to the thesis. In the case above, the specific, described things were preceded by the phrase, "euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness," with "euphemism" being the first generality of the three in that phrase, so that's the linking word and meaning.

You'll know you've got your example support for your thesis in good shape when all your examples follow Orwell's pattern of, –first, generalizing, narrowing, and introducing; –second, presenting specific, described things that can be visualized; and –third, linking to keywords in a preceding generalization or to the thesis.