Where to Put a Thesis Statement: a More Mature Approach

Where To Put a Thesis Statement: A More Mature Approach

You have heard for years that, to guide your reader, your thesis statement should be at or near the end of your essay's introduction. This advice, first given to you in third grade, is an enthymeme! An enthymeme, remember, is an ordinary sentence that amounts to a syllogism. Like any enthymeme, this advice has a claim, a reason, and several unstated assumptions.

Here's our enthymeme's claim: "Your thesis statement should be at or near the end of your essay's introduction."

Here's the enthymeme's reason: "To guide your reader."

What are some of the unstated assumptions? I'd like to focus on these two:

1. You don't want to confuse your reader.

2. Telling your reader early on what your main point is and how you intend to prove your main point is the only way to keep your reader from being confused.

I refute the second unstated assumption, but I give qualified support to the first. That is, instead of, "You don't want to confuse your reader," I'd rather say, "You don't want to frustrate your reader, but you want to make her work."

After all, we have no problem with making a reader work in our narrative writing – in fiction and even in personal essays. Remember in medias res from narrative writing? In medias res starts a story in the middle of the action instead of at the beginning. Instead of "Once upon a time," for instance, the writer of Goldilocks and the Three Bears might adopt an in medias res opening, such as, "She lay down in the third bed, and it was just right."

When you start in medias res, you risk a little confusion in order to gain some excitement or mystery. On the other hand, if you make it too easy on the reader, she may understand your story, but you'll lose her from boredom instead of from confusion. An in medias res start makes your reader work.

Of course, after an in medias res start, you're obliged to give your reader hints – breadcrumbs, if you will, that lead her to the feast you have prepared for her. So if you start, "She lay down on the third bed, and it was just right," you may want to add something like, "She wasn't at Mattress Discounters, either. She was in a cottage in the middle of a dark forest."

"Okay," you say, "in medias res is fine. But most argument essays and synthesis essays aren't narratives." True. And I'm not suggesting that you turn your AP essays into narratives, though in passing I'd suggest that a narrative framework in an argument essay can be very effective.