Structuring an Argument

Writing an essay or term paper is faster and easier if you plan what you are going to say before you begin writing. Brainstorming topics, drafting argumentative statements, and outlining your ideas are effective ways of preparing to write.

 

Finding a Topic

Sometimes, teachers will ask you to choose your own topic or choose from a list of general topics. Although such assignments can be confusing, there are some specific ways that you can come up with ideas for a topic.

REVISIT YOUR SOURCES

• Look for passages that stand out because they are confusing, unusual, paradoxical, or interesting to you personally.

• Take careful notes on a few such passages, underlining key words, circling interesting ideas, and writing your own comments in the margin.

READ SECONDARY SOURCES AND LECTURE NOTES

These sources can spark valuable ideas.

• Try to remember what parts of a lecture you found most interesting.

• Look up what other people have said about the source that you are writing about.

• If you disagree with what someone else has to say, think about why.

 

Understanding the Assignment

Assignments commonly ask multiple questions about a single topic. These questions can be overwhelming, but there are a few specific strategies for understanding what you are expected to do. Your assignment might look something like this:

Discuss the idea of justice in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Which characters wrong other characters? How do social or political institutions create their own versions of justice in the novel? In the end, is the novel optimistic or pessimistic about the possibility of justice?

Identify key words. By picking out the most important ideas in the question, you can begin to think about the evidence you will use in your essay. In this assignment, the phrases “idea of justice,” and “versions of justice,” and “possibility of justice” all suggest that there are different ways to define “justice” in Huckleberry Finn.

 

Developing an Argument

Brainstorm each part of the assignment. Address the question that the assignment asks. Take a moment to think about the separate questions right away, because this will make it easier to come up with an argument for your essay. In the question about Huckleberry Finn, there are three specific questions that must be answered throughout the paper. Take a moment to jot down your recollections.

1. Characters wrong other characters:

   • Pap locks Huck inside the house (Chapter VI)

   • The townspeople chain Jim inside a shed (Chapter XLI)

2. Social and political institutions and their versions of justice:

   • The law: The new judge gives Pap custody of Huck despite the fact that Pap is an abusive father. The law values familial bonds over individuals’ best interests. (Chapter IV)

   • Pre–Civil War Southern society: Even though Jim’s former owner has freed him, Jim is unable to assert his rights as a free citizen. The novel portrays the South as paying more attention to race than to legal status.

• In this assignment, the final question—”In the end, is the novel optimistic or pessimistic about the possibility of justice?”—is in fact a hidden key to your statement of argument. Based on your initial brainstorming, you should be able to come up with a broad idea of how to make an argument about that question. If you’ve taken the time to think about the versions of justice of Huckleberry Finn’s characters and institutions, you can support with concrete evidence a statement about the novel’s optimism or pessimism.

• Look for patterns. Identify unusual patterns in your observations about a text or event. As you read through your list of evidence, look for ideas that contradict each other, change, or aren’t fully explained. You might find that a particular writer assumes that there were only three causes leading to a war when you can identify a fourth. When writing about literature, a symbol’s meaning might change or contradict itself in a poem, or a character might change his or her attitude toward an idea.

 

Searching for Evidence

Now is the time to skim through the text again to find specific quotations and any other examples you may have missed. Depending on the scope of your assignment, you may also want to consult historical or critical research. Focus on evidence that relates to your topic and strikes you as particularly interesting, confusing, or astute. Think about how each piece of evidence supports or contradicts your topic.

• Take notes. It’s a good idea to note each piece of evidence that may be relevant to your essay. List the source and page number, and make sure it’s clear whether each piece of evidence is a direct quotation, a close paraphrase, or your own analysis or interpretation. You should pick one of the three systems of notation:

  • Notecards may be helpful because you can shuffle the cards around, arrange them into groups, or discard them as your paper develops. Put one piece of evidence on each card.

  • A word processor file may be convenient because it enables you to cut a note from one place and paste it somewhere else, including into your outline.

  • A plain old notebook may be a good option because it gives you plenty of space to work out your ideas. When you use a notebook, it’s important to think ahead of time how you want to organize your notes: by source? by chapter? by topic?

 

Developing a Thesis Statement

A thesis statement notifies your reader of your original idea regarding a topic. While your general argument may be something like, “Twain takes a pessimistic approach to the concept of justice,” your thesis statement gives your original argument about a topic. It should not be obvious or vague. A thesis must be controversial and arguable; it should be possible for someone to come up with a reasonable argument contradicting your own.

SOME POSSIBLE THESIS STATEMENTS

Weak: “Characters in Huckleberry Finn have differing views on justice. Some believe that their society is fair and just, whereas others believe that societal change is necessary.”

• The statement is obvious because it does not say anything about the novel that wouldn’t be immediately clear after reading it.

Strong: “Although Mark Twain uses the relationship between Huck and Jim to suggest that a society can be equally just to all of its racial groups, Twain himself perpetuates racial stereotypes by describing Jim as an superstitious, passive character.”

• The statement is arguable because it is possible to interpret Jim’s passiveness and superstition as appreciation for his natural landscape rather than as a racial stereotype.

• It is complex because it shows how an idea in the novel contradicts itself.

Weak: “The Civil War was caused by social, economic, and political disagreements in the North and South.”

• The statement is vague because it does not explain which specific disagreements caused the war.

• The statement is not controversial because it would be impossible to claim that these kinds of developments did not cause the Civil War.

Strong: “Disagreement between the North and South over tariffs and states’ rights was a more significant cause of the Civil War than opposing views about slavery.”

• The statement makes a controversial claim because many people believe that slavery was the primary factor that caused the Civil War.

• The statement clearly identifies specific economic and political factors.

A STRONG COMPARE-AND-CONTRAST THESIS STATEMENT

“The Old Testament characters Moses and Joshua are virtual shadows of each other, as they perform similar functions and lead the Israelites in a similar manner. However, the lesser degree of the miracles that Joshua performs can be seen as an effective literary technique for promoting the idea that Moses was greater than any Old Testament prophet to follow him.”

This thesis statement is good because it uses the differences between the two characters to point to a broader idea, identifying a literary technique in the Bible.

 

Define a Motive or Purpose for Writing

Teachers and professors read papers because they have to. But a good paper should be interesting to a broader audience. When you express your motive, you indicate why you are writing your paper. The motive is not the argument itself but rather the reason that your argument should be interesting to your reader. Motives may take into account what other critics have written, common perceptions of an event, or historical context. Some examples of motives:

• “Many critics see the relationship between Huck and Jim as fair and harmonious, but closer examination of the novel reveals that this is not the case.”

• “It is easy to assume that the main cause of the Civil War was disagreement over slavery simply because the outcome of that war had such dramatic effects on the institution of slavery.”

• “When the movie Clueless was released, many people derided it as juvenile and silly, but since then, the film has appeared more and more frequently on college reading lists.”

 

Planning Your Paper

Once you know your argument, thesis, and motive, you may want to go ahead and write your thesis paragraph (see below). Otherwise, you should begin to organize your evidence and observations. Group your evidence into categories, as this often leads to a strategy for organizing your paper. Common types of categories include:

CONTENT-BASED

Often, your topic itself will suggest categories for your evidence.

• In a paper on the Civil War, you might group evidence according to the different kinds of disputes that occurred between the North and the South.

• In a paper on Huckleberry Finn, you might categorize your argument by the social, political, and familial institutions that establish differing versions of justice.

ARGUMENT-BASED

Rather than use categories suggested by your topic, you can use categories that your argument suggests. This technique usually leads to more argumentative papers.

• In a paper on the Civil War, your categories might include common misperceptions involving the cause of the war, reasons for those misperceptions, and causes of the war that often go overlooked.

• In a paper on Huckleberry Finn, your categories might be ways in which Twain portrays Jim and Huck’s relationship as an oasis of tolerance, ways in which that portrayal fails, and reasons for the failure.

OUTLINE

If you plan the steps of your argument before you write your essay, you’re less likely to get stuck or not know where to go next. An outline is like a map of your argument; it should show the sequence of your ideas and argument. The first part of your out line should include your motive and your thesis statement. You also should write down the subcategories of your argument and note the evidence that you plan to use.