How to Write Better Essays

not set out to win its case by withholding information that might

damage it, nor by using rhetorical devices to manipulate the reader as

a lawyer might seek to influence a jury. After all, as the Greats Hand-

bookat Oxford advises, ‘Examiners will notice if you try to fudge issues

or sweep difficulties aside; it is much better to be candid about them,

and to show that you appreciate the force of counter-arguments.’^5

How to cope with thesis statements

Nevertheless, not all universities adopt this narrow interpretation

of thesis statements, and in this may lie a solution. Those who advo-

cate them often maintain they are necessary, because this is the

only way to give your essay a structure in which to develop a

coherent argument. If this is all we are after, there might be less of a

problem.

As we’ve already seen in Stages 1 and 3, you can come to a clear

interpretation of the implications of the question, from which you

develop a clearly structured plan of the essay, without that entailing a

viewpoint that you must defend. Indeed, two students can have an

identical structure and plan, yet come to quite different conclusions.

Structure does not depend on having a preconceived opinion, just an

interpretation of the implications of the question and a plan to go with

it. In turn, as this means we have no need to set out to defend opin-

ions which we have stated at the outset, we are free to suspend our

judgement, on which all our higher cognitive skills depend. We need

to be clear about this – unless we suspend our judgement as we write,

we cannot and need not use these higher cognitive skills.

Take the following example of a thesis statement from the Writing

Center at Harvard:

Further analysis of Memorial Hall, and of the archival sources that

describe the process of building it, suggests that the past may

not be the central subject of the hall but only a medium. What message,

then, does the building convey, and why are the fallen soldiers of such

importance to the alumni who built it? Part of the answer, it seems, is that

Memorial Hall is an educational tool, an attempt by the Harvard com-

munity of the 1870s to influence the future by shaping our memory of

their times. The commemoration of those students and graduates who

died for the Union during the Civil War is one aspect of this alumni

message to the future, but it may not be the central idea.^6

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