Essay Outline

Your thesis should have a central claim that is a direct answer to the question in the prompt, such as “Paul is successful” or “Paul is a failure.”  Your paper will be about WHY you make this claim and any qualification, concession, or counter-argument you wish to make.

For example,

While, according to Alger’s version of success, Paul fails spectacularly, he is, from a Paterian perspective, quite successful because even if his life is shortened, he is able to live for a moment at the height of sensory experience, which he never could have if submitted to his father’s authority and wasted his life being respectable.

Note that the first clause, expressing the concession, is subordinate to the main clause, expressing the central claim and the clause (after because) expresses your main argument. In order to make a strong case for your claim, you will provide POINTS and EVIDENCE to support both your concession clause and your reason clause in your essay.

Please review the guidelines for outlines here.  Each topic sentence in the body of your essay should assert a POINT (an idea and not just a factual piece of information from the works we’ve read) that needs further explanation and illustration. Each point should help carry the argument in some part of your thesis. Arrange these points in a logical order and you’ve got the basic structure of your essay.

For this assignment, develop an introduction that “brings the audience to the thesis,” engaging them and only providing the info that they need to understand the thesis, I suggest you also provide quotations from the book for each paragraph. Type them in.

I will set up a Peer Workshop in class for you.

You will be drafting your essay DIRECTLY within your outline, paragraph by paragraph, so ensure that it is as fully developed as you can make it.