Breakthrough Writer

Confronting the Thesis Blues

The most difficult part of a writing class is coming up with a thesis that is compelling enough for you to finish your essay without getting bored, running out of gas, and completing an essay that, in spite of its clear organizational design, is an exercise in banality (boredom).

Common problems with the thesis are as follows:

1.    It’s too obvious or self-evident and as such generates the writer’s hack formula: “Bartleby” is a story about how we get too caught up in our routine, which makes us stale, depressed, and stagnant. First, there’s the staleness factor . . . Second, there’s the depression factor . . . Thirdly, there’s the stagnation factor . . . As you can clearly see . . .
2.    It’s so trite or overstated that it provides for little more than a sanctimonious sermonette. “The Necklace” is about the dangerous consequences we suffer when we invest too much value on material things. The first consequence is self-centeredness. . . The second consequence is forgetting what’s really important in life . . . The third consequence is not appreciating what we already have . . . As you can clearly  see . . .
3.    It’s too broad and general. “Sonny’s Blues” is about the alienation and distrust between two brothers. In this essay I am going to analyze the three causes of that alienation and distrust. . . .

The scary truth about thesis:

1.    It can’t be handed to the students on a silver platter. In other words, there is no “one size fits all” thesis that will generate a compelling essay for every student.
2.    There is no quick and easy formula, like a recipe for chocolate cake, about how to make an effective thesis. A worthwhile thesis defies simple analysis.
3.    Coming up with a good thesis is the result of a lot of mental anguish, trial and error, revision, and the kind of open-mindedness that allows you to invert your initial position on a subject. In other words, unless you are a genius you are unlikely to come up with a compelling thesis the night before an essay is due. Generally speaking, a good thesis requires several days of incubation time.
4.    A clear analysis of an effective thesis can usually be made AFTER the thesis was conceived and that analysis may not be applicable to your next thesis. In other words, each writing assignment brings its own unique problems to be solved.

Nevertheless, we can find some distinguishing characteristics of an effective thesis statement:

1.    It takes intellectual risks or at the very least argues a controversial position: “The Metamorphosis” shows that while family duty is important, it must take back seat to our first responsibility, which is to sever the umbilical cord to our parents and to establish our own independence.
2.    It defends an unpopular position by presenting an issue in a new light: While televised sports is indeed an addiction for many beer-bellied men throughout America, the male dependence on professional sports is a necessary evil: They provide a relatively benign form of aggression necessary for male bonding. They cater to men’s inner caveman theater of simple heroes and villains (good teams, bad teams) without making the men resort to outright pogroms. They give men a sense of belonging, “teammanship,” and stability in the transitory corporate world.
3.    It places the story or essay in a surprising or fresh context:  The way Gregor Samsa’s family exploits him in “The Metamorphosis” can be looked at as an allegory of the way Americans exploit illegal labor in order to maintain their middle-class comforts.
4.    It compares the essay or story to a contemporary cultural malady:  The crude citizens who abuse the angel in “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” are analogous of today’s tabloid consumers who can only embrace things that are simplified for their dumbed-down appetites, who are fearful of any kind of “otherness” that threatens their conservative status quo, and who give undeserved credence to religious and political hacks who reflect their primitive fears and desires.
5.    It provides fresh analysis by comparing the story or essay to a film: The tyranny of the corporate work environment and the learned helplessness that settles into the employees in the film “Office Space” present a similar dysfunctional relationship between employer and employee that is evident in “The Metamorphosis.”

The following thesis statements are either effective or inept. Explain their effectiveness or lack thereof according to the above descriptions.

1.    “The Yellow Wallpaper” is about sexism in today’s modern society.
2.    “The Metamorphosis” shows the dilemma that our families inflict upon us.
3.    “The Metamorphosis’” conflict between family duty and independence reminds us that family ties and obligations are too often a force of irreversible debilitation.
4.    “The Yellow Wallpaper” contains many gothic elements.
5.    “The Yellow Wallpaper” shows that marriage can often lead to insanity.
6.    “An Old Man with Enormous Wings” is a critique of religious superstition.
7.    “The Lottery” reminds us that too many of us are driven to scape-goat others for reasons of self-preservation: proving to others by our eagerness to help purge “undesirable elements” that we’re not the pariah or enemy; showing our loyalty to the tribe, and convincing the tribe that we will safely conform to its rules and regulations, however primitive and odious they may be.
8.    The angel in “An Old Man with Enormous Wings” is a metaphor for the real miracles of this world, the flux, “otherness,” and mystery, which remain elusive to society’s philistines and troglodytes.   
9.    “The Yellow Wallpaper” is in part a critique of woman’s “ameliorating” role in marriage: as one who enables her husband by propping his ego at the expense of her own dignity and self-worth; as one who sacrifices her life so that her husband’s may be stronger; and as one who, succumbing to learned helplessness, finds that she has acclimated to a domesticated version of hell on earth.
10.    “The Yellow Wallpaper” and the film Safe show that women who capitulate to the passive role of “caretaker” do so at the price of their sanity.
11.    Father Gonzaga from “An Old Man with Enormous Wings” has much in common with the media personality Geraldo Rivera.

1A “Peg” Commentary (can be used for your Works Cited Page)

While Sam Shaw’s “Peg” evidences an assured, witty writer and gives us deliciously grotesque images and darkly absurd situations, his story is a dud because of Shaw’s reliance on stock, stereotype characters, his trite excoriation of empty suburban life, and a one-note joke, a talking head, that provides an all-too easy closure for a story that is bereft of any original ideas. George is a lonely sad sack and his loveless wife Rita is a shrew, but they’re too cartoonish to care about. The images of consumerism—piles of junk mail and electronic gadgets—are hackneyed.  And the gimmick of George retreating into an insane world with an imaginary companion, a talking head, is simply ridiculous and does not add poignancy or depth to a half-baked story written by a very talented writer.

1A Study Questions for “Peg” 312

1.    What is the irony of the town’s name Prospect on page 312? It is in fact, in spite of its optimistic, abundant connotations, a barren wasteland, a handful of dust where he is perceived as suicidal by Anne Pomerantz; a marriage suffused by a sense of disappointment 314. Generic houses 317.
2.    What does George do to achieve “alignment”? 312
3.    How are George and his wife a fulfilled prophecy of Nietzsche’s Last Man? 313
4.    What is George’s motivation for marriage and why must it result in failure? 313
5.    What evidence suggests an unsavory character profile of George? 313, 314, 315 lives in his head, fantasies of woman at Penny’s Video; 317 he sets a jealousy trap evidencing his immaturity;
6.    What evidence suggests an unsavory character profile of Rita? 314, 317 her passion gone; she despises her husband in a cold, frosty way 318.
7.     How does Chuck embody hedonism? 314, 315
8.    How is George’s marriage more hopeless and depressing than his brother Chuck’s? 315. Perhaps an absence of passion suggests indifference, which is the true antithesis of love.
9.    Who is “Peg”? 318. A sad chimera for a woman who truly loves him.
10.     How does the story take a turn for the worse on page 319 and suggest that George has gone completely crazy?
11.    What do George and the head (a talking head at that) have in common? 324
12.    What, if any, is the story’s theme?

Mediocre ("C"), Good ("B"), and Excellent ("A") Levels of Thesis Statements

“C” grade is general and self-evident: Farrakhan’s demagoguery includes a reliance on religious bombast, oversimplistic dualism (either/or), manipulating fear and guilt, and fanatical religious control.

“A” grade is more specific and insightful: Farrakhan is an effective demagogue because of his ability to borrow from the psychology of religion, which includes a Messianic vision, orthodox control, patriarchal authority of his “children,” and exploitation of people’s spiritual vacuum.

“B” grade is adequately specific but safe and self-evident: “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” paints a damning picture of the philistine, a lost soul beleaguered by an all-consuming interest in money, an unhealthy reliance on stereotypes, a fear of change, and an indifference to Mystery.

“A” grade is specific, more argumentative and takes intellectual risks:  Whereas “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” renders a society beholden to greed and cheap entertainment, its moral bankruptcy pales in comparison to the moral abyss rendered by today’s mega-hit American Idol, which serves up a dish of narcissistic delusion, voyeurism, cruelty, and vicarious fame-mongering unlike any age in history.

1A Thesis Fill-In for "Nadia"

_________________________, ___________________________, ____________________________________, and ___________________________ contribute to give us a noxious character profile that contradicts the narrator's cloying, pious, do-gooder facade.

In the short story "Nadia" we see that the narrator, a frumpy, self-absorbed do-gooder, is the consummate narcissist, evidenced by _______________________, _________________________, ___________________________, and _________________________________.

1A Thesis Fill-In for "The Insurgent's Tale"

“The Insurgent’s Tale,” a profile of a career terrorist, shows that America’s war against terrorists is not so black and white as it is wrought with disturbing contradictions, including _______________, __________________, _________________, and _________________.

1A Lesson for Nadia 71-93

Study Questions for “Nadia” by Judy Budnitz 71

 

1. What evidence is there that the narrator, in spite of her pious, sanctimonious tone, is in fact envious, jealous, and spiteful against Nadia and, in turn, against Joel? Packed popcorn 72; observe her like she’s an animal. Her teeth 73; 77; they use every opportunity to criticize Nadia. 78;
2. What evidence is there that the narrator and her cohorts are needy and frumpy? Their obsession over Joel’s marriage suggests “not having a life.” 72; knowing too many details, like Joel’s earwax levels 72; they ask Joel for too many details about Nadia 73; they keeping asking Joel why he hasn’t had children 77;
3. How does the narrator rely on convoluted “reasoning” to punch a moral jab against Joel on page 76? What makes this type of reasoning so insidious? 77
4. What delusion do they cook-up in order to “save” Joel? 77 He’s unhappy, “frustrated.” No doubt he’s frustrated with these female charlatans. They shift the blame to Nadia when in fact they are grating on Joel’s nerves.
5. Why does the narrator have no credibility when she bloviates about the pieties of suffering on page 178?
6. How does the narrator unwittingly reveal herself a backstabber on page 78?
7. Read the narrator’s description of Nadia on the top of page 79. How does she achieve a tone of condescension, arrogance, and frosty heartlessness?
8. How does the narrator’s malice assert itself on pages 80 and 81? Also see 86.
9. What insidious psychological abuse against Nadia does the narrator use on page  81?
10. How are do-gooders so insidiously evil on page 82? “We’d done it for his own good.”
11. What makes the narrator so impervious to her own evil so that she can destroy others with a clear conscience? 82 bottom, 83.
12. Describe the one truthful moment the narrator has regarding her wretched existence on page 86.
13. In spite of the narrator’s claims to good intentions, what evidence on page 87 suggest that all her actions are motivated by self-interest?
14. How does the narrator and her cohorts suck the life out of Nadia on pages 88 to the end?
15. What infuriating lie do we see on page 91? That they nearly killed Nadia and that it was an “accident.”
16. How do the do-gooders reveal their true character on page 92?

One. Write a one-paragraph profile of the story’s narrator.

Two. Do-Gooder

1.    He confuses naiveté and innocence for virtue
2.    He has high aspirations and zeal to spread goodness or stifle evil but without the expertise creating more harm than good.
3.    He is too simplistic to detect nuance and gray.
4.    He hides his fear of the world behind banal pieties.
5.    When the bloody and gritty world fails to conform to his sentimental utopian fantasy, the do-gooder is compelled to misanthropy. (The teacher who started with high hopes and made students wear tie made of construction paper).

The Six types of Do-Gooders

One: The Misanthrope

Two: The Attention-Getter, Fred in the first grade, the coat

Three: The Western Imperialist (see The Quiet American)

Four: The Bully who joins religious organizations who target the weak, easy targets, books in libraries. They’re hate-mongers.

Five. The Busy Body

Six: The frustrated adolescent (Mike who joined a homeless shelter, never bathed, he felt guilty for having money)

Three. Lexicon

1.    Condescension, condescending 79, 87 bottom, 88 top
2.    Envy, hater 77, 86
3.    Unreliable narrator 80, 82, 92: truth comes out
4.    Lachrymose
5.    Captain Save-A-Babe 74
6.    Woeful dysfunction 74: helpless to the point of being dangerous
7.    Peever 74
8.    Mercedes drivers usually can’t drive
9.    Narcissism, lack of self-awareness, self-absorbed, no empathy, no identity: 74, 75, 77 bottom, 78, 82, 86, 91
10.    Moral inversion of the narcissist 86, 87
11.    Animus against poor: 74
12.    Story’s metaphor 75
13.    Allegory, a symbolic narrative
14.    Needy 76, 86 bottomless pit
15.    Provincial 78
16.    Book smart, street smart (common sense, capable of intimacy)
17.    Schadenfreude 80
18.    Seeking victimization as a form of empowerment 88
19.    Vampire theory of “love” 88, 89

Sample thesis: The narrator of “Nadia” is the consummate narcissist. This is followed by 4 mapping statements.

1A Lesson Plan for “The Insurgent’s Tale” (108)

Part One. In a paragraph explain the Khalid’s moral contradictions.

Part Two. Lexicon:

1.    jihad
2.    jihadi
3.    sharia, Islamic law
4.    qat
5.    mafraj
6.    orthodox
7.    rigorist
8.    pious/piety
9.    hijab, head scarf
10.    mujahideen
11.    Shiites
12.    Sunnis
13.    Jahiliyyah, ignorance of God, the period of ignorance, the wilderness of consciousness with no moral compass.
14.    Madrassah

Part Three: Study Questions for “The Insurgent’s Tale” (108-123)

One. What makes Khalid’s jihad in Iraq more difficult than other countries? 108 He was once a hero; now he’s a villain. See also page 120
Two. What makes Khalid uneasy about conducting jihad in Iraq? 109
Three. Describe the conditions in Yemen. 109, 110.
Four. How does Khalid defy the stereotype of a terrorist? 111 Bottom paragraph; 112
Five. What are the noble origins of Khalid’s jihad? 112, 113 (since the age of 16)
Six. What makes Khalid maladjusted to domestic life? 115
Seven. What makes it difficult to leave the life of militant jihad? 116, 120 (jihad follows him); 122 (nostalgia)
Eight.
Eight. Why does Khalid rethink militant jihad? 109, 121, 122

Part Four: Background of Militant Jihadi

1.    20 million Muslims in Western Europe, about 5%. Will be majority in 30 years.
2.    High unemployment.
3.    Discrimination
4.    Secular alienation
5.    Disaffected
6.    Spiritual alienation
7.    Tolerance of intolerance, radical speech of some imams
8.    Religious piety intensifies when a Muslim moves from his home country.
9.    Radical jihad is disseminated on Internet, a popular influence among young Muslim males.
10.    Jihadis come from middle class and are educated, not poor.
11.    Jihadis come from parents who are moderate, liberal and secular.
12.    87% of Jihadis have a secular education and did not get training from a Madrassah
13.    Two thirds have attended college
14.    Three quarters are married with children, defying the stereotype of the outsider.
15.    Recruitment does not come from some special recruiter; rather, it comes from friends.

Why Going to College Is Probably a Good Idea

In 1979 when I was seventeen, my father, recently divorced from my mother, picked me up in his silver Peugeot to take me to his apartment for dinner. On the drive he asked me if I had any plans for my future. I told him that at the gym I had met a couple of garbage men who said they had connections for me if I should ever want to work with them. I was tempted to take them up on their offer. After all, I had no specific college aspirations. And the thought of making thirty grand a year, a handsome salary in the 1970s, and being finished with my job by eleven A.M. appealed to me.

Shifting into fifth gear, my father looked at the road ahead of him with a knowing calm, then said: “There’s no way you’re going to become a garbage man. ”

“Why not?”

“Because someday you’ll be at a cocktail party and someone will ask you what you do. What are you going to tell him, that you’re a garbage man?”

That was the end of the discussion. My father knew that even though I was a confused adolescent full of sloth and harebrained schemes, that ultimately my vanity, my pride and my class consciousness would steer me clear from becoming a garbage man.

But my foolishness persisted. Six months later as we gathered ingredients inside a supermarket for another dinner inside my dad’s apartment, I told him I knew people at my gym who worked as cashiers at this same grocery chain. The money was good, the benefits were decent and the work seemed relatively easy.

“You’ll never become a grocery clerk,” my father said with serene confidence.

“Why not?”

He stopped pushing the shopping cart and told me to take a good look at all the employees with their box cutters, their feather dusters and their slack-jawed, lizard-eye expressions. Were these the kind of people I wanted to hang out with for the next forty to fifty years of my life? Were these the type of people whom I aspired to converse with and to befriend? Indeed not. These were Lifers, mushy-brained cookie-cutter personalities whose banal, predictable, culturally-bankrupt existence would drive me to existential despair.

However simplistic my father’s caricature description of the supermarket Lifers, I was suddenly averse to the idea of working all of my adult years at the generic supermarket chain. I decided to take my father’s advice to go to college and study English for a career in technical writing.  The vocation was a modest one and it was doubtful I’d make as much money as a garbage man, but there was no shame in telling someone at a cocktail party that I was a technical writer--or a college English instructor. 

What We Inherited from Our Caveman Ancestors

I heard these two guys on the radio talking about how mentally screwed up we all are because in modern society we’re so comfortable, so fat, and so well-off that we don’t exercise this part of our brain that our caveman ancestors had to use in order to survive their brutal conditions and that when that part of the brain is not utilized for survival it asserts itself by creating insane problems that have nothing to do with reality so that now, while we don’t have to burden ourselves with killing giant Mastodons and dragging their rotting carcasses back to the cave for dinner, we have to fend off this constant impulse inside us to invent monstrous crises that loom inside our imagination and we invest all our time and energy fretting over these imaginary problems, we become miserable, we feel utterly helpless under the weight of these obsessions, and we find ourselves far worse off than our caveman ancestors who couldn’t leave their cave for two seconds without worrying about some pterodactyl or other carnivore snatching their babies out of their arms or biting a giant hunk out of their ass.

I can remember the comedian Larry David, shining under the glory of his hit TV show Seinfeld, discussing this topic during an interview with Charlie Rose. He explained that while Seinfeld had made him millions upon millions of dollars and had ceased his need to worry about money for the rest of his life, he had this dysfunction in his brain so that when one worry was erased it was immediately replaced by another worry, like hypochondria, so that Larry David, no matter how rich, was doomed to languish in some form of agony or other forever and ever.

One of the grotesque ways we sublimate our caveman impulses is by frequenting those all-you-can-eat buffets, such as Claim Jumpers and HomeTown Buffet, which are, to my lament, sprouting all over Los Angeles. I despise the buffet, a trough for people of less discriminating tastes who saunter in and out of the restaurant at all hours, entering the doors of the eatery without shame and blind to all the gastrointestinal and health-related horrors that await them. Many of the patrons cannot walk out of their cars to the buffet but have to limp or rely on canes, walkers, wheelchairs, and other ambulatory aids, for it seems a high percentage of the customers are afflicted with obesity, diabetes, arthritis, gout, hypothalamic lesions, elephantiasis, varicose veins and fleshy tumors. Struggling and wheezing as they navigate across the vast parking lot that leads to their gluttonous sanctuary, they seem to worship the very source of their disease.

In front of one local buffet is a sign of rules and conduct. One of the rules urges people to stand in the buffet line in an orderly fashion and to be patient because there is plenty of food for everyone. Another rule is that children are not to be left unattended and running freely around the buffet area. My favorite rule is that no hands, tongues, or other body parts are allowed to touch the food. Tongs and other utensils are to be used at all times. The rules give you an idea of the kind of people who eat there.

One afternoon I was afforded an especially hellish insight into the buffet's inner workings. As I walked to the gym from my car, which shares a parking lot with the buffet gluttons, I could not avoid the nauseating smell of stale grease oozing from the buffet’s rear dumpster, army green and stained with splotches and a seaweed-like crust of yellow and brown grime. I saw cooks and dishwashers, their bodies covered with soot, coming out of the back kitchen door to throw refuse into the dumpster, a smoldering receptacle with hot fumes of bacteria and flies. Hunchbacked and knobby, the poor employees were old, weary men with sallow, rheumy eyes and cuts and bruises all over their bodies. I imagined them being tortured deep within the bowels of the fiery kitchen on some Medieval rack. They emerged into the blinding sunshine like moles, their eyes squinting, with their plastic garbage bags twice the size of their bodies slung over their shoulders, and then I looked into their sad eyes—eyes that seemed to beg for my help and mercy. The vision of these lugubrious souls has afflicted me with a recurring nightmare that a giant hairy claw with thick talons emerges from the kitchen door, from which flames flicker, and then this monstrous claw grabs one of the workers around his torso. He flails his arms and screams for mercy, but to no avail. The claw pulls him back into the fuming hell of stale grease and rancid chicken fat. Whatever the significance of my disturbing dream, I am haunted by these images of those poor men trapped at their job and I am overcome with dread and anxiety every time I pass them on my way to the gym.

My sympathy for the workers, however, was dwarfed by my disgust for what I perceived to be criminal behavior of some of the patrons. An extended family, all fat with a multiplicity of flabby chins that rippled like flapping bird neck appendages, limped out of the buffet. They were  bloated, sickly, full of crapulence. The corpulent matriarch, the grandmother, had a huge travel bag full of donuts and biscuits that she had pilfered from the buffet tray. Apparently, she hadn’t stuffed herself enough. The donuts and biscuits were falling out of her over-packed tote bag as she hobbled across the parking lot. You could see the baked goods rolling across the asphalt like rot-gut bowling balls.  This grandma’s butt was too big to get into the back seat of the banged-up, rusted Mercury Topaz, so she had to swing the door all the way open. Seemingly oblivious, she rammed the right door into the left door of  a brand new dark gray Honda Accord parked in the next space. The Topaz door was wedged right into the once-pristine Accord and I could see sparks and gray paint chips flying off it. All the while the grandmother, straining with her cane, was lowering herself into the Topaz while grunting like a pig. She squatted lower and lower while gagging and squealing. Spittle flew out of her mouth along with bits of semi-masticated biscuit clods.

It gets worse. The grandma’s weight sunk the back of the Topaz so low that the car’s rear hit the asphalt and this made the door wedge deeper and deeper into the Accord. By now the door had violently gashed that poor new Honda. I was just standing there with my gym bag in my hand wondering if I was the only person who saw what was going on. It then occurred to me that someone’s Accord was getting thrashed. I rushed into the gym and explained the situation to the manager and he let me tell everyone what had happened over the PA system. A guy ran off the StairMaster while screaming hysterically and I followed him to the parking lot. The family was still sitting in the Topaz. They were so stuffed from their feeding that they were now “recovering” inside the car with the windows down, fanning themselves with the buffet’s take-out menus. The Honda owner was irate. He screamed at them and they just looked at him with bovine indifference, their blubbery chins glistening with drool. A bunch of clueless gluttons destroying and devouring everything that comes into their path--all because they couldn't find a more productive way to channel the caveman impulses that roiled within their emotionally-arrested DNA.