1. Establishing the main idea of your Critical Analysis Essay
Thesis Statements
Establishing the main idea of your Critical Analysis Essay

2. Writing a Thesis
Your thesis is the central argument you will spend the rest of your essay explaining/supporting.
Your thesis needs to lend itself to analysis, not just description or plot summary.
Don’t just say something obvious about the book. Say something brilliant and original.
Your thesis statement must include the words The Great Gatsby and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

3. Thesis Statements
Your thesis must have some sort of ORIGINAL observation.
Your thesis CANNOT just focus on one aspect (plot, characters, etc)
You must ALSO focus on the larger point.
What is Fitzgerald trying to teach us? What’s the lesson or message? What is he saying about human nature or society?

4. Questions to ask…
When deciding what to write about, ask yourself the following questions:
What did you like about TGG? What did you dislike? WHY?
What do you think FSF was trying to teach you? What lessons did you (or could you) learn? Why are these lessons important? How does FSF communicate these lessons? Through what literary techniques?
How is the book still relevant today, even though it was written 90 years ago? What comparisons/contrasts do you see between the book and actual day-to-day life? Why is it important to read and study TGG?

5. Teacher-Student Dialogue
What do you think of TGG? Didn’t like it.
Why not? All the characters were stupid
Which characters were stupid? Why? They were all selfish and greedy
What do you think we are supposed to learn from this? That we shouldn’t be selfish and greedy
Why is this lesson important? It’s not.
No, seriously. Why do we need to learn that? Because not being selfish and greedy will teach us how to behave properly in society.
How does FSF teach us this? Through the characters.
Which characters? Daisy and Gatsby
How? Daisy acts selfishly by marrying Tom just for money and then she’s unhappy. Gatsby is selfish in wanting Daisy, and then he doesn’t even get her at the end.
What do we notice about these two examples? They’re both negative.
Then what do we learn? That selfishness will lead to unhappiness
Why is this an important lesson? Because we shouldn’t be selfish
So for your thesis, we need to have the idea that through the characters’ actions and their negative consequences, FSF is teaching us how to behave. Yeah.
Write that in one clear, concise sentence.
Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby serve as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s cautionary tale against selfish actions and their inevitable negative consequences in The Great Gatsby.
In The Great Gatsby, the individual downfall of both Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby reflect F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s admonition against egocentrism.

6. Good Thesis Examples
Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby serve as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s cautionary tale against selfish actions and their inevitable negative consequences in The Great Gatsby.
In The Great Gatsby, the individual downfall of both Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby reflect F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s admonition against egocentrism.
In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s use of color imagery and symbolism help to establish prominent themes of material excess.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the moral decay of society is reflected in each of the three principal characters.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the dangers of an exponentially advancing technology are depicted in the imagery of the vehicles and in the setting of the Valley of Ashes.

7. Insufficient Thesis and Re-Writes
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Tom Buchannan is a violent and cruel person.
This is only a description of the character. What is Fitzgerald trying to teach you about violence or cruelty? How does Tom function in the novel?
Re-writes
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Tom Buchannan serves as a violent caution against marriage for the wrong reasons.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Tom Buchannan violence and cruelty reflects the depraved morality of the Roaring Twenties.

8. Insufficient Thesis and Re-Writes
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the titular tragic hero attempts to win the love of Daisy Buchannan.
This is just plot summary. What is important about Gatsby trying to win Daisy’s love? What do we learn from his failure?
Re-Writes
In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald demonstrates the futility of following idealistic dreams through the main character’s romantic failure.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, the title character’s failed romantic ambitions symbolize the failure of the American Dream.