read instruction below carefully and develop a working thesis for the movie “Candyman”
every paper needs a thesis, and in your essay, this thesis should appear as the last
sentence of your introduction.
This thesis needs to have two components: a FOCUS (the aspect of the two texts your
essay will focus on to provide evidence for your argument) and, most importantly an
ARGUABLE ASSERTION (the argument you are making about the two texts).
This concept of your assertion needing to be arguable is a key one. Only a statement
that can be disagreed with is truly arguable, so you can’t say something so simple that
any reader could see it in the text. Having an ARGUABLE ASSERTION requires going
into depth into the text and staking a strong position on it.
TEMPLATE FOR THESIS: You are not required to word your thesis in this way, but I’m
going to offer you a very simple template for thesis construction to show you how
FOCUS and ARGUABLE ASSERTION work together.
By [FOCUS], [DIRECTOR] suggests [ARGUABLE ASSERTION].
So, an example would be something like:
By depicting the conflicting forces affecting Anthony and Brianna’s art careers, Nia
DaCosta suggests that the way to promote social change in art is to…. [something
something].
Okay, so your assignment is to choose which of the two films you are going to choose
as the subject of your first essay and to take a stab at what you think your thesis might
be. This is just a guess (a hypo-thesis), so you are just experimenting here. You do not
have to use this thesis in your final essay. Try to create a good thesis loosely following
the above template, and you’ll receive full credit.