Discovering a thesis

How do I come up with a line of interpretation – a thesis?

There is no easy answer to this but try to think of a thesis as the washing line on which the rest of your points are going to hang.  Hopefully, the following might provide you with some starting points:

• Identify the most important feature of content and ask yourself what is being suggested about that feature of content. 

• Alternatively, what is the most important aspect of style? You could point to imagery and structure in some instances as contributing a great deal to the way a particular theme is presented. 

• Look for contrasts. More often than not, short extracts will make use of significant oppositions – whether between ideas, sections of the text or perhaps such things as strands of imagery. 

• Development: is there an underlying sense of transition in the poem or extract – whether in terms of its ideas, the content, or its language and style? 

• Conflict: our interest in prose, poetry and drama very frequently comes from the establishment of some kind of central tension, whose resolution (or lack of it) is often responsible for maintaining our interest. 

• Why, in essence, do you think this is a good piece of writing?

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