What is a thesis?
Your thesis is the main argument of your paper. A successful thesis is specific, debatable and surprising. Think about your thesis as being composed of three elements: it should make a claim, explain why it is interesting and indicate why it is important.
A Strong, debatable thesis statement has three components:
1. WHAT – your claim about the topic at hand
2. HOW – the means by which the topic will be examined—what will you use to prove your argument
3. SO WHAT – the significance of your idea in terms of the world outside your paper
1. A thesis should be specific.
When writing your thesis statement, keep in mind the scope of your paper: you only have 3-4 pages to make your point. You do not have the space or the expertise to make a convincing argument about broad historical time periods or general psychological truths—you are trying to prove something specific about how we experience our homes.
Bad example: Since the beginning of time, man has made himself at home in the world and in each epoch he has devised different ways to do this. The structures have changed, but the feeling has remained the same.
2. Avoid a thesis that lists:
Often this simply creates a façade of analysis without actually saying anything specific or debatable. Often a list-thesis includes the elements that could be interconnected and developed into a thesis.
Bad example: We experience our homes not only through the faculty of sight, but also through the faculties of smell, hearing and memory as well.
3. Beware of unnecessary qualifiers.
Don’t soften your claim with qualifiers such as “somewhat,” “quite” or “in a way.”
Bad example: While most people think of home as some kind of a shelter from both physical and emotional dangers, because of the role that the imagination plays in our experience of home, it is somewhat more helpful to think of it as a network of memories and inter-subjective relations.