Faculty of Arts,
Chulalongkorn University
Developing
an Argument Exercise
Here
is an exercise in developing an argument that you can try. The
same skills apply to coming up with an idea for a reading response,
an exam essay, or a class paper. For this activity you can get
into groups to study the text, brainstorm ideas, and develop a
thesis. Let’s take money or wealth as a topic.*
- First ask yourselves some progressively specific questions about
money, such as how does money figure in the novel, that is, how is it
portrayed, what is its function in the work, is it described in any
consistent way? How does it relate to other things, themes or
literary elements (popularity, profession, class, education, life,
desire, achievement, looking and seeing, time, characters, setting)?
- Next you’ll want to read closely passages or lines that reveal
something about these relationships. You might focus on the passage of
Gatsby’s parties:“There was music from my neighbor’s house” (29) to “its
own ticket of admission” (31).
- Now, make a list of as many observations as you can about the language
of this passage, grouping them into these preliminary categories:
- Evidence suggesting a link between money and other things
- Evidence suggesting a contradiction or conflict between the nature
or character of different things or of the same thing
- Things in the text that seem unrelated to money
- With these observations in mind, reconsider your original questions in
1). Reformulate your question in more specific terms. Don’t
feel bound to keep key terms or topics if your discussion and analysis
lead you to a different concern. At this point, you might shift
focus from “money” to “identity,” for example. A form of this question
may eventually be useful in helping to structure and write your
introduction.
- Now, re-examine your observations in 3. and begin to organize the meat
of your argument. Give special scrutiny to those items in list 3. that
seemed unrelated to money. Sometimes these incongruities serve as
a compelling way into the heart of the issue. Start with an
obvious statement but then tease out the implications of each detail in
that statement. Be thorough and creative.
- Now that you have demonstrated the connections as you see them, for a
conclusion, do not merely agree or disagree with the initial rewritten
question. Instead, discuss the nuances raised by the question, or how
the question was even wrong-headed in its formulation, or lay out the
details of why the question is a good or bad one for you to have
asked. Here, you can link evidence from 5., which is the core of
your argument and findings, to your final impressions of the issue and
the text.
*Adapted from Anne Fernald’s
Emma: Developing an Argument exercise handout (1993)
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