Thesis and Organization
Do I have a strong, clear, and arguable thesis?
Have I articulated that thesis early in my essay?
Is my introduction interesting? Does it capture a reader's attention?
Does each of my subtheses support my thesis?
Have I properly limited the number of my subtheses?
Have I explored each subthesis fully and completely?
Have I used sufficient and appropriate citations from the text (and from secondary sources) to support each point? Have I clearly explained why the citations from my sources support my argument?
Have I clearly marked the transitions from one subthesis to the next, and indicated their relationship accurately?
Is my conclusion really a conclusion? That is, does it sum up my argument, so that my reader can clearly see where I have arrived, and perceive that my argument has been satisfactorily resolved?
Research, Documentation, Mechanics
In describing the literary text, have I used the present tense? (I.e., “Macbeth says,” not “Macbeth said.”)
Have I avoided plot summary and paraphrase?
Have I used an appropriate number of secondary sources? Have I drawn my evidence primarily from the text I am interpreting?
Have I chosen my secondary sources with regard to such considerations as the recency of scholarship, the expertise of the author, and the respectability of the publisher?
Have I cited my sources accurately? Have I avoided the temptation to take sentences or parts of sentences out of the context of the author's argument?
Have I avoided the temptation to produce an anthology of quotations? Is the essay clearly my essay, and not an essay written by my sources with my help?
Have I responded to at least one critic who disagrees with me? (NB: This is not always possible, but your credibility is greatly increased when you show that you are aware of other points of view and can respond to them.)
Are all my citations, both in the text and the Works Cited, in the format specified by the MLA Handbook?
What makes for a good thesis — or a bad one?
An essay’s thesis can be bad (malformed, inappropriate) in many different ways, but the most common kind of badness, by far, is when a thesis isn’t really arguable because no reasonable person could disagree with it. You think that Hector is fighting not primarily for glory but in order to save his family? So does everyone else. You believe that in ancient Athens a woman who schemes like Clytemnestra is treated with deep suspicion? Welcome to the world. You think Wiglaf’s faithfulness to Beowulf is exemplary? Join the club.
When you come across a thesis that seems strong to you, you always, always, have to ask: Would any competent and moderately attentive reader of this work disagree with me? If not, then it’s not a good thesis, period.
That doesn’t mean, though, that you need to start over. You may just be asking the wrong questions. That Hector fight for his family, that Wiglaf is faithful to Beowulf — these are uncontroversial statements. But what if you asked other questions? For instance: How does Homer reveal to us Hector’s deepest concerns? What scenes or events or conversations are especially important in revealing his character to us, and how do they do so? Why does the Beowulf poet place such emphasis on the unique loyalty of Wiglaf? What key themes or ideas emerge through that character? These are matters reasonable people could disagree about.
Having trouble coming up with a topic? Read this:
He'd been having trouble with students who had nothing to say. At first he thought it was laziness but later it became apparent that it wasn't. They just couldn't think of anything to say.
One of them, a girl with strong-lensed glasses, wanted to write a five-hundred word essay about the United States. He was used to the sinking feeling that comes from statements like this, and suggested without disparagement that she narrow it down to just Bozeman.
When the paper came due she didn't have it and was quite upset. She had tried and tried but she just couldn't think of anything to say.
It just stumped him. Now he couldn't think of anything to say. A silence occurred, and then a peculiar answer: "Narrow it down to the main street of Bozeman." It was a stroke of insight.
She nodded dutifully and went out. But just before her next class she came back in real distress, tears this time, distress that had obviously been there for a long time. She still couldn't think of anything to say, and couldn't understand why, if she couldn't think of anything about all of Bozeman, she should be able to think of something about just one street.
He was furious. "You're not looking!" he said. A memory came back of his own dismissal from the University for having too much to say. For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see. She really wasn't looking and yet somehow didn't understand this.
He told her angrily, "Narrow it down to the front of one building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick."
Her eyes, behind the thick-lensed glasses, opened wide.
She came in the next class with a puzzled look and handed him a five-thousand-word essay on the front of the Opera House on the main street of Bozeman, Montana. "I sat in the hamburger stand across the street," she said, "and started writing about the first brick, and the second brick, and then by the third brick it all started to come and I couldn't stop. They thought I was crazy, and they kept kidding me, but here it all is. I don't understand it."
Neither did he, but on long walks through the streets of town he thought about it and concluded she was evidently stopped with the same kind of blockage that had paralyzed him on his first day of teaching. She was blocked because she was trying to repeat, in her writing, things she had already heard, just as on the first day he had tried to repeat things he had already decided to say. She couldn't think of anything to write about Bozeman because she couldn't recall anything she had heard worth repeating. She was strangely unaware that she could look and see freshly for herself, as she wrote, without primary regard for what had been said before. The narrowing down to one brick destroyed the blockage because it was so obvious she had to do some original and direct seeing.
[Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance]