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 How
to Write a Term Paper
 Choose a Topic
Crafting a Thesis
Courtesy
of Thomson Gale - www.gale.com
This guide is designed to support you as you use
electronic and print resources to:
Choose a Topic
"Do not hunt for subjects, let them choose you, not
you them." - Samuel Butler
1. Choosing a topic is the first step in the
pursuit of a thesis. Below is a logical progression from
topic to thesis:
a. Close reading of the primary text,
aided by a reading journal
b. Growing awareness of interesting
qualities within the primary text
c. Choosing a topic for research
d. Asking productive questions that help
explore and evaluate a topic
e. Creating a research hypothesis
f. Revising and refining a hypothesis to
form a working thesis
2. First, and most important, identify what
qualities in the primary source pique your imagination and
curiosity, and send you on a search for answers. This
process of identification can be facilitated through the use
of the reading journal.
a. A reading journal is a
permanent record of your immediate and candid responses
to a piece of literature.
b. In your journal, record spontaneously
those quotations, ideas, questions, observations, and
associations that move you, the reader. Also record the
page where you can later find the source of your
responses.
c. Excerpts from a journal kept while
reading Toni Morrison's Beloved:
p. 3: "124 was spiteful. Full of
baby's venom." Why is the house identified as a
number? And where did the baby venom come from?
"Baby venom" interesting oxymoron! Why is 124 never
referred to as a home? Sethe's sons have fled the
house because it "committed" some horror. The house
sounds scary. A woman's identity is often so tied up
with her home that I wonder what Morrison is
implying about Sethe. on p. 4: when she refers to
the house's "Outrageous behavior": for example, it
"turned-over slop jars ... and [emitted] gusts of
sour air." Drivers whip their horses when they pass
124. Clearly outsiders are also afraid. Like Shirley
Jackson's Hill House or Poe's House of Usher, 124
seems to be "vile."
Note: This journal entry reflects the
reader's growing interest in the house itself. A
possible topic?
3. Below is a brief description of productive
questions asked by critical thinkers. Each question is
followed by a definition and a response. These kinds of
questions may be used to explore and evaluate a topic.
a. Knowledge: Who, what, when,
where, how.
Question:
Where is 124 located?
Response:
124 Bluestone Road is in Ohio, on the route taken by
fleeing slaves.
b. Comprehension: Awareness of a
work's organization and pertinent ideas and facts.
Question:
Why is Sethe's story told in bits and pieces rather
than in clear chronological order?
Response:
Sethe tells a sliver of memory and then retreats
from the pain of remembering. The reader has to wait
for the story of Sweet Home, where she lived as a
slave, and of 124 to unfold gradually. Beloved calls
these memories Sethe's "diamonds," an implication of
her place in Sethe's past and of the value of
memories.
c. Analysis: Separation of the
whole into parts.
Question:
Why are there so many seemingly disconnected female
voices?
Response:
There seems to be a variety of female voices in
Beloved: Sethe's, the living black community's,
and dead slaves'.... I wonder how the voices will
join and how they will affect life at 124.
d. Synthesis:
Combining those parts into a meaningful whole. Synthesis
is especially effective when it results in new insights.
Question:
Are the voices in the yard of 124, those voices that
wash over Sethe, the combined voices of all black
women in the novel? Have they come to save her and
exorcise the horror from 124?
Response:
p. 261: "... the voices of women searched for the
right combination, the key, the code, the sound that
broke the back of words. ... It broke over Sethe and
she trembled like the baptized in its wash."
e. Evaluation: development of
opinions, judgments, criticisms, or decisions
Question:
Does the story begin and end at 124 because it is
the unifying element in the novel? Is this where
Sethe's damnation or redemption is told and played
out? What role does Sweet Home play in shaping
lives?
Response:
I think I'll explore the role of 124 and of Sweet
Home in the lives of the women as a possible thesis
for my research.
f. Application: Use of
information, ideas, opinions, insights to create a
research product that offers new, interesting, and
personally satisfying knowledge.
Question:
How can I use my journal entries to guide me in my
first steps towards formal research?
Response:
Because my journal entries focus on the role of 124
in the narration of Sethe's story, I'll
1) reread Beloved for more
details regarding the house
2) research views on the role of
124 and Sweet Home in the novel
3) see if I have enough pertinent
and interesting information to create a paper
that explores available scholarship and offers
new insights.
Conclusion:
Topic — The role of houses in Beloved and the
way they shape women's lives
4. Skimming reference works such as
encyclopedias, books, critical essays and periodical
articles can help you choose a topic that evolves into a
hypothesis, which in turn may lead to a thesis. For an
example of a relevant encyclopedia, use a key word search as
you explore Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature.
a. One approach to skimming involves
reading the first paragraph of a secondary source to
locate and evaluate the author's thesis. Then for a
general idea of the work's organization and major ideas
read the first and last sentence of each paragraph. Read
the conclusion carefully, as it usually presents a
summary (Barnet and Bedau 19).
b. Below is an example of skimming the
first and last paragraphs of a critical essay found in
the Literature Resource Center's Source Database:
Contemporary Literary Criticism Select.
1) Locate the essay about Toni
Morrison's novel, Nameless Ghosts: Possession and
Dispossession in Beloved.
2) Skimming the first paragraph
produces words like "ancestry," "matrilineal,"
"mothers," "daughters," "memory," "biblical,"
"myths," and "folklore" Promising words, as the
topic is; In Beloved, the role of houses in
women's lives.
3) The essay's thesis seems to focus
on the relationship between generations of women:
enslaved, freed, alive, and dead.
4) The last paragraph begins with the
phrase "how to live in the present without canceling
out an excruciatingly painful past." The essay may
relate to the topic. Writing a bibliographical card
and reading the essay more carefully appear to be
sound decisions.
Crafting a Thesis
1. Very often a chosen topic is too broad for
focused research. You must revise it until you have a working
hypothesis, that is, a statement of an idea or an
approach with respect to the primary source that could form the
basis for your thesis.
2. The following is an example of how to develop
first a working hypothesis and then a working thesis
related to Beloved:
a. Topic: The role of Sweet Home and
of 124 Bluestone Road in women's lives
b. Question: What roles do the
houses play in specific characters' lives?
Working Hypothesis:
The houses in Beloved both affect and reflect the
lives of the women who live in them.
c. Do not commit too soon to any one
hypothesis. Use it as a divining rod or a first step that
will take you to new information that may inspire you to
revise your hypothesis. Be flexible. Give yourself time to
explore possibilities. The hypothesis you create will mature
and shift as you write and rewrite your paper. New questions
will send you back to old and on to new material. Remember,
this is the nature of research — it is more a spiraling or
iterative activity than a linear one.
d. Test your working hypothesis to be sure it
is
1) broad enough to promise a variety of
resources.
2) narrow enough for you to research in
depth.
3) original enough to interest you and
your readers.
4) worthwhile enough to offer information
and insights of substance.
e. The following are specific questions asked
while refining a hypothesis related to a research paper on
Beloved:
1) Am I too broad in considering all
women living in Sweet Home and in 124 Bluestone Road?
Should I focus only on black women?
2) Should I explore the lives of women of
different generations? Would the lives of Baby Suggs,
Sethe, Denver, and Beloved, grandmother, mother and
daughters, give me an interesting intergenerational
point of view?
f. The questions asked above lead to the
following hypothesis:
In Beloved, Sweet Home and 124
Bluestone Road affect the lives of Baby Suggs, Sethe,
Denver and Beloved.
3. Now it is time to craft your thesis, your
revised and refined hypothesis. A thesis is a declarative
sentence that
a. focuses on one well-defined idea
b. makes an arguable assertion; it is capable
of being supported
c. prepares your readers for the body of your
paper and foreshadows the conclusion.
4. Below is a thesis crafted after a careful
consideration of the above hypothesis:
In Beloved, the spiritual and physical
enslavement of Baby Suggs, Sethe, Denver and Beloved is
shaped by chattel slavery and reflected in the houses at
Sweet Home and on Bluestone Road.
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