Skip to main content

Considering the attached documents, what are some ideas or examples of thesis statements related to the texts "Boys and Girls," Hamlet, "The...

It appears that your instructor is asking you to think of potential thesis statements for essays you might write in the future about your assigned readings. The thesis statement need to address certain themes. 


For the theme of identity, you might state that in "Boys and Girl" the narrator originally has an almost genderless identity as a prepubescent child. In the story she gradually begins to develop the identity of a "girl" as she reaches puberty, and finds this identity quite restrictive, especially in the way that it constructs her as inferior to her brother Laird. You could next mention that her moment of decision comes when she lets the horse Flora escape, giving Flora. albeit only briefly, the freedom she herself is about to lose when confined to the woman's world of the kitchen.


For Hamlet, his identity is established as a Prince of Denmark and yet he too has to make a choice as to whether he will identify with his father and take revenge or support Claudius. You could argue that the decisive moment for him is that in which he decides to assume the identity of avenger of his father, as that sets the subsequent plot in motion. Another important element of identity in the play is that of false identity, of Hamlet pretending to be mad and the actors pretending to be characters of the play within the play. One could even argue that Claudius is in a sense assuming a false identity of King, based on murder an duplicity.


In Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," Harry's identity rests on his role as writer and adventurer and for him these two identities are closely tied together. This identity is closely related to his sense of gender, in which the female appears almost as a threat to his self-identity and independence, and something he blames for his creative dry spell.


For additional issues in the assignment, please create a separate question. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.