Seven Options for Essay
Option One
Develop a thesis that answers the following question: How do characters in Lasdun's "love stories" reach the demonic state?
By "demonic" I mean several things:
They go mad.
They become irrational.
They become obsessed.
They lose contact with reality.
They become blind to their own self-destruction.
They lose sight of their meaningful connections and as a result they lose those connections.
They chase a pipe dream or a chimera and obliterate themselves in the process.
They become bitter at their wasted life and realize they've squandered their existence on a "crap dream." They're overcome, as a result, with self-hatred and remorse.
Consider, their madness as the result of the Faustian Bargain, settling, the dream of eternal adolescence, and the chimera for a comparison essay that includes at least 3 stories, "The Half Sister," "The Natural Order," and "Peter Khan's Third Wife." Be sure your essay is 1,000 words and includes a Works Cited page with a minimum of 2 sources.
Weak thesis statements are a statement of fact:
Lasdun's characters reach the demonic state because they lack a rational orientation to the world.
Lasdun's characters reach the demonic state because they lack a moral center.
Lasdun's male characters are mired in the demonic because they are imprisoned by misogyny, blind ambition, and craven lasciviousness.
Improved thesis that focuses on a debatable claim:
While we are tempted to scold Lasdun's characters for their moral failings and the resulting demonic state that afflicts them, a close look at Lasdun's world gives us a compelling case for determinism, which is to say we are incapable of moral choices because of ______________, ______________, ____________, and _________________.
Option Two
Analyze the dream of eternal adolescence and its corruption of the soul by comparing this dream to "An Anxious Man," "The Natural Order" or "The Half Sister" and Joseph Epstein's essay "Perpetual Adolescence."
By perpetual adolescence, we meaning the following:
Chasing Eros instead of maturing.
Chasing the ego's needs instead of maturing.
Adulating or worshipping the culture of youth while shunning wisdom.
Chasing the compulsivity of youth and never learning the self-control of maturity.
Chasing the hedonism of youth instead of finding connection and meaning.
Pursuing Dionysian impulses instead of Apollonian inclinations. Some say that all literature is about the conflict between Dionysian and Apollonian forces.
Be sure your essay is 1,000 words and includes a Works Cited page with a minimum of 2 sources.
Weak statement of fact makes a weak thesis:
Lasdun's characters are perpetual adolescents.
Stronger thesis is a debatable claim:
Lasdun's characters, like most people, embrace the common metrics of success in our society, which are based on perpetual adolescence evidenced by _____________, ____________, ____________, and _______________.
Option Three
Analyze the corruption of fatherly love in "Cleanness" or "Caterpillars" (or both) with Erich Fromm's notion of the Authoritarian Personality. Be sure your essay is 1,000 words and includes a Works Cited page with a minimum of 2 sources.
Weak thesis based on a statement of fact:
The patriarchs in Lasdun's stories evidence the corruption of fatherly love.
Stronger thesis based on debatable claim:
The patriarchs in Lasdun's stories show that the traditional roles that define fatherhood are based on the disease of false authority evidenced by __________, __________, _________, and ______________.
Option Four
Compare the theme of the chimera (idealized love) and its resulting futility as it occurs in the "Peter Kahn's Third Wife" and F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Winter Dreams." Observe that both stories follow the Faustian Bargain motif. Be sure your essay is 1,000 words and includes a Works Cited page with a minimum of 2 sources. Here's another link to "Winter Dreams."
Weak thesis based on statement of fact:
Lasdun's characters are afflicted with the chimera.
Stronger thesis based on debatable claim:
While McMahon is correct to point out the chimeras that fill the imaginations of Lasdun's characters, he errors in pointing to the chimera as the cause of the characters' despair. To the contrary, having a chimera is a natural way to give humans the drive and will to live. The real problem is that Lasdun's characters pursue a chimera that is soaked with the toxicity of perpetual adolescence evidenced by ___________, ___________, _____________, and ______________.
Option Five
In a 1,000-word essay, compare the Faustian Bargain in "The Half Sister" to the H.G. Wells short story, "The Country of the Blind."
“The Half Sister” (page 64)
Be sure your Works Cited page has no fewer than 2 sources.
Weak thesis based on weak statement of fact:
The characters suffer because they make a deal with the devil.
Stronger thesis based on a debatable claim:
As humans we are driven by comfort, safety, and security, but as "The Half Sister" and "The Country of the Blind" show, the hunger for comfort, safety, and security too often backfire and result in a Faustian Bargain evidenced by ___________, __________, ____________, and ______________.
Option Six
Analyze "An Anxious Man" in terms of the Faustian Bargain described in the essay "Love People, Not Pleasure," by Arthur C. Brooks.
Weak thesis based on statement of fact:
Joseph Nagel is the "anxious man" because he has made a deal with the devil.
Stronger thesis based on a debatable claim:
While Joseph Nagel is tormented by the anxieties resulting from his Faustian Bargain, he would even be more miserable had he not made the Bargain because ____________, _________, __________, and _____________.
Option Seven Applies to "The Incalculable Life Gesture"
Analyze at least two stories as examples of the "emotional car crash" the characters have become because they either have no metacognition or the misapplication of metacognition.
Weak thesis based on a statement of fact:
Lasdun's characters inevitably suffer an emotional car crash because of their lack of metacognition.
Stronger thesis based on debatable claim:
McMahon errors when he talks about Lasdun's characters suffering from an absence of metacognition. In fact, to argue, wrongly, that the characters lack metacognition is to push for an immoral worldview because ___________, ____________, ___________, and _____________.
Effective and Less Effective Ways to Introduce Your Essay
Effective Methods
1. Anecdote: You might write about how a guy lost his temper at the drive-thru.
2. Personal narrative: You might right about a time in your life you hit rock bottom and how this despair was followed by an epiphany.
3. Illustration:
You might illustrate the steps a car salesman uses to cheat a customer.
4. Vivid description:
You might describe a high school in Finland, which is more of an education palace.
You might describe a 90-year-old bodybuilder at a Las Vegas swimming pool.
5. Startling fact: There are more black men in prison today than there were black slaves at the peak of American slavery.
6. Rhetorical question that introduces the topic from which your thesis is based:
Why do we incarcerate drug offenders rather than submit them to rehab when rehab is cheaper and cuts down on crime?
Are we hard-wired to be miserable?
7. Cogent quotation: There are thousands and thousands of people out there leading lives of quiet, screaming desperation, where they work long, hard hours at jobs they hate to enable them to buy things they don’t need to impress people they don’t like.
Nigel Marsh
8. Piece of dialogue you heard or read
“The Incalculable Life Gesture” (50)
Richard’s moral flaw:
Self-righteous indignation rooted in part that life is supposed to be fair and just and that we shouldn’t let narcissistic parasites (such as Richard’s sister) have their way.
We learn in examining Richard's moral flaw--the self-destructive resentment he harbors against his sister who he rightly sees as a cipher--that the more we rationalize our flaws the more we become irrational; the more we are technically right about an issue, the more we can be morally and spiritually wrong and as such we live an irrational life and evidence The Irrational Mind, a person whose irrational impulses have taken over metacognition. The result: The person becomes a dumpster fire, a car crash.
Another Theme of the Irrational Mind: When We're Right But We're Even MORE Wrong
Categories of Being Right But Being More Wrong
One. We see the trees but not the forest: some law or doctrine that causes destruction even as we obey it.
Two. We make a bad situation worse: We report a bully who's beating our child and the bully retaliates.
Three. We hurt people's feelings by telling the truth. Not all situations merit the truth. White lies are permissible when we have to preserve feelings or the safety of people.
Four. We choose victory over humanity. Study group keeps dead weight and loses the contest.
Five. We rationalize our selfish behavior by saying, "we're right." The guy on the bus who won't give up his seat to old lady because "I was first" is selfish.
Six. We lie to give hope and spare feelings.
Seven. We have bad intentions. A teacher says, "It's your obligation to come to class prepared" even as he humiliates a student.
Eight. Not knowing whole story. You get a waitress fired from her job because of her horrible service, but you don’t know she’s a single mother whose boss harassed her in the back office and her three children are sick and she can’t afford a babysitter.
Nine. Gloating. "I told you so."
Ten. You bring up a truth but you don't have a purpose or an end game. A guy tells his girlfriend for example that she doesn't love him, that she uses him for all the presents he gives her and her response is, "Yes, so what do you plan to do about it?" The guy is speechless because he doesn’t have an end game.
Questions for “The Incalculable Life Gesture”
One. What’s the psychological profile of Ellen on page 50?
A leech, a cipher, an indulgent, narcissistic ne’er-do-well. She represents the Dionysian spirit, one of chaos, while Richard embodies the Apollonian spirit, one of order. But is Richard any better, wanting his share of a small house when his sister and child need shelter? I find myself siding with Richard. Am I as petty as he is?
Two. How is Ellen unfair to her brother Richard regarding the inheritance of the house and how does Richard respond to this injustice?
He’s in a dilemma: Be a victim or a bully. Like Joseph in "An Anxious Man," he appears to lack convictions or a core self as he worries hiring an attorney to kick his sister out of the house might compromise his appearance with others. See page 51. Further, Richard can't see himself as selfish or petty because he identifies himself, rightly or not, as an intellectual helper of others, a spiritual guide, yet if we're honest Richard seems rather lost in his life.
Further, we could argue that the swelling he has ignored is a metaphor for some spiritual disease that is eating him and this disease may be rooted in Richard's existential vacuum.
Three. How does Ellen pour salt into the wounds she has inflicted upon Richard? See 51.
She has contempt for her brother and doesn’t see her brother’s capitulation to handing over the property to her as a good deed; she’s entitled to it from her point of view. She is the hostile victim who has been wronged from her standpoint.
She is icy that her brother can afford organic groceries while she slogs for food at Walmart.
Four. What bothers Richard about the possibility of death on page 54?
Death makes a mockery of his life but his real death is that he has no place, identity, or belonging in society. That is Richard’s “death.” His personal frustration compels him to find a scapegoat, his sister, for whom to blame all his problems.
Five. Why did Richard decide to become a teacher? See page 57.
He wanted to teach others but also himself, find a way to be his own healer, so to speak, but in the tradition of Lasdun’s fictional characters Richard proves to be little more than a feeble cipher. Rather than have a core identity, he seems vain and at the mercy of others' opinion of him to base his self-image. As we read on page 54, he was worried that a diagnosis of cancer would change his image to others: one a healthy robust man, he would not be seen as a sick, moribund loser.
Six. Is the malady a metaphor for unrealistic expectations regarding justice and charity? Explain.
No, the malady is the disease that is Richard’s unrealized existence, his absence of meaning and core identity. Frustrated, he uses his hatred for his sister as his escape; therefore, he “needs” to hate her.
Seven. How does Richard’s self-image as a life-priest alienate him from modern life? See 57 and 58.
We see Richard is so vain that he never committed to any real vocation or calling for all the choices he considered in the end lacked "radiance" worthy of his exceptional being. Perhaps he is simply vain and slothful and lacking the rigor to take on a true profession lives in the delusion that he is of a rarefied breed, an "educator."
Eight. What does the story’s acrimonious ending seem to be telling us about empathy?
That empathy does not exist in self-centered, narcissistic ciphers like Richard, those waifs who are too full of self-regard to notice the struggles of others. See page 62 in which Richard wants his sister to share his glee for not having cancer when in fact his sister doesn't have time: She has pressing errands to run.
Nine. What is Richard's delusion or moral flaw?
That he has the right to fume and stew over his sister's injustice when in fact his resentment is killing him more than the injustice itself. His resentment is a cancer that is growing like the tumor on his face.
Option Seven Applies to "The Incalculable Life Gesture"
Analyze at least two stories as examples of the "emotional car crash" the characters have become because they either have no metacognition or the misapplication of metacognition.
Principles of an Effective Thesis
First, identify the kind of thesis required by the assignment. It could be argumentative, definition, cause and effect, or claim of value.
The above assignment could be formulated into an argumentative thesis, cause and effect thesis, or claim of value thesis.
Abel from “The Natural Order” and Richard from “The Incalculable Life Gesture” are prime specimens of the “emotional car crash” because . . .
Abel from “The Natural Order” and Richard from “The Incalculable Life Gesture” are prime specimens of the “emotional car crash” evidenced by . . .
The moral lesson we learn from “The Natural Order” and “The Incalculable Life Gesture” is that our lives are emotional car crashes if we don’t become someone, by which I mean . . .
The Steps to Drafting a Thesis Statement
After deciding on which assignment option interests you the most, you need to brainstorm a topic list (or use a wheel).
Today’s assignment option: Analyze at least two stories as examples of the "emotional car crash" the characters have become because they either have no metacognition or the misapplication of metacognition.
Topic Brainstorm
Emotional car crash, having the bottom drop from you, the panic and anxiety of a free fall, looking for an escape through delusion or scapegoating.
Abel’s free fall has him questioning the legitimacy of his marriage and marriage in general. His bizarre thinking has him deciding that NOT having an affair would be an act of self-betrayal.
Richard’s free fall has him obsessing over his loser sister while diverting himself from his own failures: his disconnection with his family, his personal finances, and his weak identity.
Both Abel and Richard feel like outsiders, men who’ve followed society’s rules but have nothing to show for it. Their anger, however, is directed outward when they should not blame society but take responsibility for their own personal change.
Both Abel and Richard see themselves as victims of forces they cannot control. As a result, both are desperate. Desperate people do reckless things, which make their situation worse.
Try to Narrow Your Thesis
Too general and too easy: Abel and Richard are both self-destructive because they give in to their irrational impulses.
Revised, more specific, more challenging: McMahon is eager to label Abel and Richard “ciphers” but a close examination of these characters reveals that McMahon is in error, that in fact Abel and Richard are substantive, intellectuals who suffer from the various mental diseases resulting from a lack of meaning. These diseases include _____________, ________________, __________________, and _____________________.
Another revised example: The problem with Lasdun’s characters, Abel and Joseph, isn’t that they’re ciphers, as McMahon likes to call them, but that they live a cipher-like existence resulting from their blind embrace of perpetual adolescence evidenced by _____________, _________________, _________________, and ___________________.
Another revised example, almost the same as above: The problem with Lasdun’s characters, Joseph and Richard, isn’t that they’re “ciphers,” as McMahon likes to call them, but that they live a cipher-like existence resulting from their blind embrace of consumer culture evidenced by _____________, _________________, _________________, and ___________________.
Another revised example: Many of the characters in James Lasdun's short story collection go down the path of destruction because they find something that they are partly right about and use that "being right" as an excuse to be in denial about the bigger picture in which are more importantly wrong. This form of denial is evidenced in many ways, including ___________, __________, __________, and ______________.
Another Method for Arriving at an Effective Thesis—Ask an Important Question That Addresses the Essay Prompt
A good thesis is often the answer to a compelling question.
Why have so many millions of people been suckered into eating fake, barely edible food at places like Appleby’s, Olive Garden, TGI-Fridays, and other odious establishments?
These disgusting restaurants spend a small fraction of their budget making good food; rather, they spend most of their money on marketing and advertising that prey’s on the public’s gullibility evidenced by _______________, ____________, ______________, and ____________________.
Apply this principle to one of the essay prompts
Option One
Develop a thesis that answers the following question: How do characters in Lasdun's "love stories" reach the demonic state?
Thesis that is too easy
Abel, Claire, and Martin are three characters who are not so much in love as they are demonically possessed by a chimera: the quest for greed (Martin), lust (Abel), and respite from abuse and boredom (Claire).
Revised by asking a question
If falling in love is equated with pursuing some self-destructive chimera, as McMahon would have us believe, are we to believe that McMahon is warning us to shun love altogether?
McMahon is not interested in telling people if they should love or not. Rather, he is saying that Lasdun’s stories reveal that no good decision can be made unless characters are self-possessed, a quality that is woefully absent in Lasdun’s characters evidenced by ________________, _________________, ________________, and _______________.
To be self-possessed means to have
Metacognition
Maturity, defined as the ability to leave the womb, psychologically speaking, and learn to love and reason as an adult
To identify and avoid symbiotic, clinging relationships that are mutually self-destructive
To identify and avoid the tendency to convert the love quest into a chimera quest born of desperation and false expectations
Another way of improving your thesis—finding an edge
The more general and obvious your thesis, the weaker it is. Find an edge, by being specific and finding something that is more of an argument than a statement of fact.
Ineffective thesis: In “The Natural Order” Abel faces a difficult decision about staying committed to his marriage.
Effective, more specific thesis: Abel’s decision to betray his wife and daughter reveals more about a society that aggrandizes perpetual adolescence in the form of that lascivious satyr Stewart than it speaks about Abel himself.
Ineffective thesis: In “Peter Khan’s Three Wives” Claire seeks to escape her abusive marriage by disappearing into an insane chimera of idealized love.
Effective, more specific, more argumentative thesis: “Peter Khan’s Three Wives” isn’t so much about Claire’s insane chimera quest as it is a feminist perspective on the vulnerability and helplessness of women living in a patriarchal society.
Ineffective thesis: “An Anxious Man” is about a husband who becomes addicted to the stock market.
Effective, more specific, more argumentative thesis: The real horror of Lasdun’s “An Anxious Man” isn’t so much watching Joseph Nagel’s free fall into his stock market addiction but looking at the story as a critique of modern capitalist society that allows the pathologies of stock market to be looked upon as normal and “enterprising.”
Ineffective thesis: Lasdun’s stories consist of a lot of foolish individuals who find themselves destroyed by their personal chimeras.
Effective, more specific, argumentative thesis: McMahon’s unsympathetic portrayal of Lasdun’s characters as “fools and ciphers” falling prey to the chimera fails to address the deeper, richer theme of Lasdun’s short story gems: What Lasdun is really doing is taking more or less normal, intelligent characters and making them fall prey to their chimera to show that the human condition is so insufferable, banal, and empty that even the best of us are compelled to create a parallel universe. Lasdun’s stories therefore are not about losers making bad decisions. They’re about the need to live in an imagined, chimeric universe as a result of _________________, _________________, __________________, and __________________.
The importance of Critical Thinking discussed on Stephen Colbert.
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