1. Observation +
Complication
Significance
The 3-part thesis

2. Purpose of the Thesis
The thesis, usually expressed in one or two sentences, is the central, organizing claim of your paper.
Because each paragraph’s job is to drive an argument forward by proving the thesis, the thesis largely determines the type of paper you get to write.
If your claim is complex, you have the option of picking the best arguments for your strong paper and having a lot to talk about.

3. Purpose Continued
Your thesis will probably change as you look more closely at your quotes while writing... This is a good thing, usually leading to a more complex, arguable, and significant central idea.
Before you turn your paper in, ALWAYS check to make sure that your thesis matches the argument that you’ve ended up writing! If your essay went in an unexpected direction, revise your thesis to fit the essay that you wrote.

4. BASIC THESIS GENERATOR
Observation: what you’ve noticed in the text
Complication: how O works/is used/changes
Significance: How O + C contributes to the author/text’s larger message, concerns, tensions, etc
Specific strategy, literary device(s), and/or pattern
What that device, strategy, or pattern does in the text
So What? O + C reveals/suggests/disproves/etc…

5. Evolving Thesis Statements: O + C
In Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, the author uses onomatopoeia and visual representations of distorted sounds
to introduce and represent Billy’s profound moral and spiritual confusion. The breakdown of familiar words into unfamiliar syllables suggests that language itself is breaking down.
Observation: pattern/device
Complication: creates analogy
Significance: MISSING

6. Evolving Thesis Statements: C + S
Billy’s profound moral and spiritual confusion, in the novel, his inability to find meaning,
suggests that Americans have, in their misinterpretations of violent spectacles, lost the ability to understand themselves.
Observation (WHAT): MISSING
Complication (HOW): creates analogy
Significance (WHY): reveals historical condition and its hidden effects

7. Evolving Thesis Statements: O + S
In Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, the author uses onomatopoeia and visual representations of distorted sounds to represent what Billy hears during musical moments at the SuperBowl. Familiar words and songs, like the national anthem, break down into unfamiliar, nonsensical syllables.
This is because America is breaking down into nonsense.
Observation: pattern/device
Complication: MISSING
Significance: reveals specific historical argument within the text.

8. PUTTING TOGETHER A THESIS
In Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, the author uses visual representations of distorted sounds, and the ironic tension between different vocabularies, to represent Billy’s search for meaning at the Super Bowl.
The Cowboy Nation civilians’ manic and conflicting messages contrast with Billy’s patient efforts to understand familiar words and songs, like the national anthem, as they break down into unfamiliar syllables or impossible questions.
By depicting the chasm across which Billy and the civilians try to understand each other, the novel suggests America’s very ability to depict or understand itself is breaking down.
Observation: pattern/device
Complication: creates analogy
Significance: reveals historical condition and its hidden effects

9. INITIAL THESIS— WHAT’S MISSING?
In Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, the author uses visual representations of distorted sounds, and different vocabularies, to represent the nonsense that the national anthem has become because Americans can’t talk to each other anymore.

10. INITIAL THESIS— WHAT’S MISSING?
In Billy Lynn, the author uses visual representations of distorted sounds, and different vocabularies, to represent the nonsense that the national anthem has become because Americans can’t talk to each other anymore.
#1—More specifics on the literary device/strategy
#2—Complication: HOW device/strategy actually works
#3—more about WHY it matters that Americans can’t talk to each other, and how this relates to historically specific problems
#4 – Give the title of the book, say where the author does this.

11. REVISED THESIS
In Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, the author uses visual representations of distorted sounds to recreate Billy’s experience of the national anthem, which breaks down into unfamiliar syllables or impossible questions.
In Billy’s close third person narration during the anthem, he uses a martial vocabulary to describe the female fans and a lyrical and scientific vocabulary to describe Billy’s emotions.
This creates an ironic tension between the Cowboy Nation civilians manic and violent emotions and Billy’s patient efforts to understand them and their familiar words and songs.
By depicting the chasm across which Billy and the civilians try to understand each other, the novel suggests America’s very ability to depict or understand itself is breaking down.
√ More specifics on the literary devices/strategies
√ How Fountain actually uses those devices/strategies
√ More specific WHY Fountain uses that device, the “so what” question

12. Keep re-writing:
In Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, the author uses visual representations of distorted sounds to recreate Billy’s experience of the national anthem. Familiar words start to seem unfamiliar and strange. This de-naturalizes the Cowboy Nation civilians’ reactions to both the anthem and the war.
By using a martial vocabulary to describe the female fans and a lyrical and scientific vocabulary to describe Billy’s emotions, Fountain suggests that it is the frenzied fans whose reactions should be deemed strange.
Billy’s confusion creates layers of ironic tension around familiar American symbols and words, and suggests that only by re-evaluating these symbols and words will Americans begin to understand their own role in the world.
√ More specifics on the literary devices/strategies
√ How Fountain actually uses those devices/strategies
√ More specific WHY Fountain uses that device, the “so what” question

13. Language Problems
In Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, the author’s visual representations of sounds for Billy’s experience of the national anthem kind of de-naturalizes the Cowboy Nation civilians’ reactions to both the anthem and the war.
By using a war vocabulary to describe the female fans and a science vocabulary to describe Billy’s emotions, this suggests that it is fans should be deemed strange.
Billy’s confusion is layers of ironic tension for familiar American symbols and words, and suggests that only by re-evaluating these symbols and words will Americans begin to understand their own role in the world.

14. Language Problems: Revised
In Ben Fountain’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, the author uses visual representations of distorted sounds to recreate Billy’s experience of the national anthem. Familiar words start to seem unfamiliar and strange. This de-naturalizes the Cowboy Nation civilians’ reactions to both the anthem and the war.
By using a martial vocabulary to describe the female fans and a lyrical and scientific vocabulary to describe Billy’s emotions, Fountain suggests that it is the frenzied fans whose reactions should be deemed strange.
Billy’s confusion creates layers of ironic tension around familiar American symbols and words, and suggests that only by re-evaluating these symbols and words will Americans begin to understand their own role in the world.

15. To Sum It Up:
Thesis statements evolve. A thesis with only one or two of the full three is not “bad.” It hasn’t been built up to its optimal level of insight, but that one part is still useful for later evolutions.
Keep revising your thesis to match the essay you’re writing and checking to make sure that your essay matches your thesis.