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Thesis Statement About Love Tips + Example

How do you write a thesis statement about love? In this article, you will be getting tips for writing about thematic statement love so keep reading.

Tips for Writing a Thesis Statement About Love

Conduct the first research

You can write a thesis statement about love from different angles: this could be romantic, platonic, love between family, love as a sacrifice, etc. Whichever angle you choose to write from, make sure to read previously written works on the subject first.

Write a proposal

The information you get from your first research will help you to draft a proposal for your thesis statement. When you write a proposal, the dominant tense to use is the present future tense. This is because a proposal tells the reader what you intend to do rather than what you have done.

Conduct a second research

After your proposal has been approved, the next thing to do is conduct another research. This second research will be more in-depth than the first because you will need to show the results of your work. However, you can still use the information you have in your proposal to write your thesis.

Structure your work

To make your thesis come together, it will need a structure. This structure comprises chapters such as the introduction, the literature review, the methodology, the results and discussion, and the conclusion.

How to Write a Thematic Statement About Love

Understand the literature

If you do not understand the literature first, there is no way you will be able to write a good thematic statement about it. So, make sure you focus on core things like the story’s plot, the characters, the writing style, among others.

Be original

When writing a thematic statement love, try to use your own words as much as possible. Now, using your own words does not mean you should try to distort the message of the literary work for which you are writing your thematic statement. Try to use your words but make sure you maintain the message that the author was trying to pass across.

Avoid cliches

When writing a thematic statement, do not write like this:

“The theme of this novel is pride and prejudice.”

Rather, write:

“Pride and prejudice play a crucial role in the human response to certain situations in this novel.”

After writing your thematic statement, make sure you edit for any mistakes. Rephrase any confusing words and also check for spelling errors.

Examples of Good and Bad Thematic Statement About Love

Theme: Love and other emotions

Bad Thematic Statement: Love is the predominant theme in this novel.

Good Thematic Statement: Love is stronger than anger, hate, and other painful emotions.

Theme: Family Love

Bad Thematic Statement: Love is strong in the family.

Good Thematic Statement: Love is what keeps the family together even after many fights and arguments.

With these tips, you do not have to worry about writing a thematic statement about love. Just put these tips to work and you will be able to write a successful thematic statement.

Before You Write a Love Essay, Read This to Get Examples

The day will come when you can’t escape the fate of all students: You will have to write a what is love essay.

No worries:

Here you’ll find tons of love essay topics and examples. No time to read everything? Scroll down to get a free PDF with original samples.

Definition: Essay on Love

First, let’s define what is love essay?

The most common topics are:

Definition of love
What is love?
Meaning of love

Why limit yourself to these hackneyed, general themes? Below, I’ll show how to make your paper on love original yet relevant to the prompt you get from teachers.

Love Essay Topics: 20 Ideas to Choose for Your Paper

Your essay on love and relationship doesn’t have to be super official and unemotional. It’s ok to share reflections and personal opinions when writing about romance.

Often, students get a general task to write an essay on love. It means they can choose a theme and a title for their paper. If that’s your case, feel free to try any of these love essay topics:

Exploring the impact of love on individuals and relationships.
Love in the digital age: Navigating romance in a tech world.
Is there any essence and significance in unconditional love?
Love as a universal language: Connecting hearts across cultures.
Biochemistry of love: Exploring the process.
Love vs. passion vs. obsession.
How love helps cope with heartbreak and grief.
The art of loving. How we breed intimacy and trust.
The science behind attraction and attachment.
How love and relationships shape our identity and help with self-discovery.
Love and vulnerability: How to embrace emotional openness.
Romance is more complex than most think: Passion, intimacy, and commitment explained.
Love as empathy: Building sympathetic connections in a cruel world.
Evolution of love. How people described it throughout history.
The role of love in mental and emotional well-being.
Love as a tool to look and find purpose in life.
Welcoming diversity in relations through love and acceptance.
Love vs. friendship: The intersection of platonic and romantic bonds.
The choices we make and challenges we overcome for those we love.
Love and forgiveness: How its power heals wounds and strengthens bonds.

Love Essay Examples: Choose Your Sample for Inspiration

Essays about love are usually standard, 5-paragraph papers students write in college:

One paragraph is for an introduction, with a hook and a thesis statement
Three are for a body, with arguments or descriptions
One last passage is for a conclusion, with a thesis restatement and final thoughts

Below are the ready-made samples to consider. They’ll help you see what an essay about love with an introduction, body, and conclusion looks like.

What is love essay: 250 words

Lao Tzu once said, “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” Indeed, love can transform individuals, relationships, and our world.

A word of immense depth and countless interpretations, love has always fascinated philosophers, poets, and ordinary individuals. This emotion breaks boundaries and has a super power to change lives. But what is love, actually?

It’s a force we feel in countless ways. It is the warm embrace of a parent, filled with care and unwavering support. It is the gentle touch of a lover, sparking a flame that ignites passion and desire. Love is the kind words of a friend, offering solace and understanding in times of need. It is the selfless acts of compassion and empathy that bind humanity together.

Love is not confined to romantic relationships alone. It is found in the family bonds, the connections we forge with friends, and even the compassion we extend to strangers. Love is a thread that weaves through the fabric of our lives, enriching and nourishing our souls.

However, love is not without its complexities. It can be both euphoric and agonizing, uplifting and devastating. Love requires vulnerability, trust, and the willingness to embrace joy and pain. It is a delicate balance between passion and compassion, independence and interdependence.

Finally, the essence of love may be elusive to define with mere words. It is an experience that surpasses language and logic, encompassing a spectrum of emotions and actions. Love is a profound connection that unites us all, reminding us of our shared humanity and the capacity for boundless compassion.

What is love essay: 500 words

A 500-word essay on why I love you

Trying to encapsulate why I love you in a mere 500 words is impossible. My love for you goes beyond the confines of language, transcending words and dwelling in the realm of emotions, connections, and shared experiences. Nevertheless, I shall endeavor to express the depth and breadth of my affection for you.

First and foremost, I love you for who you are. You possess a unique blend of qualities and characteristics that captivate my heart and mind. Your kindness and compassion touch the lives of those around you, and I am grateful to be the recipient of your unwavering care and understanding. Your intelligence and wit constantly challenge me to grow and learn, stimulating my mind and enriching our conversations. You have a beautiful spirit that radiates warmth and joy, and I am drawn to your vibrant energy.

I love the way you make me feel. When I am with you, I feel a sense of comfort and security that allows me to be my true self. Your presence envelops me in a cocoon of love and acceptance, where I can express my thoughts, fears, and dreams without fear of judgment. Your support and encouragement inspire me to pursue my passions and overcome obstacles. With you by my side, I feel empowered to face the world, knowing I have a partner who believes in me.

I love the memories we have created together. From the laughter-filled moments of shared adventures to the quiet and intimate conversations, every memory is etched in my heart. Whether exploring new places, indulging in our favorite activities, or simply enjoying each other’s company in comfortable silence, each experience reinforces our bond. Our shared memories serve as a foundation for our relationship, a testament to the depth of our connection and the love that binds us.

I love your quirks and imperfections. Your true essence shines through these unique aspects! Your little traits make me smile and remind me of the beautiful individual you are. I love how you wrinkle your nose when you laugh, become lost in thought when reading a book, and even sing off-key in the shower. These imperfections make you human, relatable, and utterly lovable.

I love the future we envision together. We support each other’s goals, cheering one another on as we navigate the path toward our dreams. The thought of building a life together, creating a home filled with love and shared experiences, fills my heart with anticipation and excitement. The future we imagine is one that I am eager to explore with you by my side.

In conclusion, the reasons why I love you are as vast and varied as the universe itself. It is a love that defies logic and surpasses the limitations of language. From the depths of my being, I love you for the person you are, the way you make me feel, the memories we cherish, your quirks and imperfections, and the future we envision together. My love for you is boundless, unconditional, and everlasting.

A 5-paragraph essay about love

I’ve gathered all the samples (and a few bonus ones) in one PDF. It’s free to download. So, you can keep it at hand when the time comes to write a love essay.

Ready to Write Your Essay About Love?

Now that you know the definition of a love essay and have many topic ideas, it’s time to write your A-worthy paper! Here go the steps:

Check all the examples of what is love essay from this post.
Choose the topic and angle that fits your prompt best.
Write your original and inspiring story.

Any questions left? Our writers are all ears. Please don’t hesitate to ask!

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Love Argumentative Essays Samples For Students

324 samples of this type

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Free Argumentative Essay On Quintessential Love Song

Almost all classic songs are about love. Since ancient times, artists have endeavored to write songs of love to stir the heart. Their works have ranged from the saccharine and sappy to the truly moving. In spite of the artists’ varied levels of accomplishment and artistic merits, each of these songs relies on certain tropes and exhibits certain qualities that are endemic to the “love song” genre. In all quintessential love songs, three tenets (common qualities) have stood out; simple lyrics delivered with sincerity, use of a saxophone and they are sung in moderately slow tempos.

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Primary Claim (Thesis Statement For Your Argument) Argumentative Essays Examples

Men and women can be “just friends,” but the circumstances dictate whether or not they remain platonic friends..

Rationale: Scientists have discovered that not only is platonic friendship possible, it is beneficial to both individuals in the friendship. Relevant Research: - Psychologists and their research on the purpose and function of inter-gender friendships - Evolutionary psychology and the meaning of sexual strategy

List the counter arguments you will need to address as well.

- Men and women often have difficulty remaining friends - Women sometimes approach relationships differently from men

- Differences between the way men and women approach relationships - Sexual identity and the meaning of sexual identity in relationships - Jealousy and infidelity in relationships

Cross-Sex Friendship: The So-Called “Impossibility” of Inter-Gender Platonic Love

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Most of us seldom realize that we carry the dead with us, most of the time. In his most interesting work of all time, Derrida has tried to address some of these obsessions most of us have with these issues. This essay will however focus on some very pointed issues by explaining how Derrida’s idea of deconstruction is related to hauntology. In doing so, this essay will also endeavor to explain the connection between deconstruction and ghosts through themes such as death, absence, the structure of the sign and melancholia.

Relation between Deconstruction and Hauntology

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Analysis of Slumdog Millionaire as an Adaptation of Q&A

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What Love Is and Why It Matters Research Paper

Thesis statement, relation of love and stress, personal perspective of love, validation of love in relation to perk, works cited.

Lack of love during the early childhood life causes poor emotional development during adult life. (Hurlock, 47)The way people respond to stress is not present at birth but is natured as people develop especially during the first few years when the brain is still fresh and young and thus the emotional development is crucial. High activity in the brain is an association to fear, irritability and a reaction of withdrawal from other people.

What is a legacy plan? It is associated with love because it is an arrangement of what one wishes to have but it should include the gift of good record, direction, family and personality. The plan stands to benefit the family, children, and grandchildren beside the personal gains.

It calls for one to keep in touch with the wonderful personality, which existed back when things give the impression of extreme credibility. It is more fun and meaningful to plan for, and wish others well more than it is to have a working financial plan. The family love is a priceless offer. Unlike Oedipus, love is not blind, tragic or compulsive. The true meaning of life is to create love in the human consciousness. Cognisant being must be involved in all aspects and movements involving love. (Vacek, 1996)

This paper is a critical analysis over the characteristics associate with the definition of love. It firmly takes the notion, “ Falling in love entails spiritually nurturing personal and populace growth ”.

What is stress? Probably it is equitable to physical, mental, emotional or spiritual strain. The most common theory behind measures of controlling stress revolves around love, regular rest and exercise. (Lazarus, 254) Arguably, money cannot buy these quantifiers.

The love for something influences one to fight and attain it. As Peck would put it, our love to achieve anything forces us to willingly focus and change the attitude through pain. Everything that happens to human beings is designed so to conceal what one loves, thus the need to overcome the obstacle.

There is significance in giving a legacy plan to people with a close relation to their obsessions, beside the personal treats. If capturing and delivering love is not possible, as it ought to be, then it looses it eminent value. In line with Lazarus, (254) Lack of internal expression and thought over someone or something causes an under-attraction thus leading to forgetfulness.

Naturally, People forget something as a soon as they stop thinking about it. When one loves something /someone, all the love virtues are intrinsically achievable after one goes through some enduring amount of constructive suffering.

The secret to happiness would probably be falling in love especially with oneself. Love creates the feeling of having enough energy thus the probably that it is an inborn feature that does not require nurturing but has a feeling that lives within as long as a person keeps taking care of it.

People luck the love because of spending too much time looking for it elsewhere while it is close to them. The external world is made of parents, friends or even strangers and their failure to express love disappoints and causes devastation to someone. The opinion of others especially when negative or against one’s anticipation shatters the personal sense of self-esteem and love.

Everyone wants to feel loved and affectionate. This is almost certainly the true meaning of the peace in the mind. It affects the inner fear and doubts and thus people are able to communicate freely concerning any subject matter. Bestowing wisdom requires an open and free dialogue and that is the reason why children are encouraged to create good rapport with others. Lack of practice over the issue of love early in a person’s life causes an awkward and clumsy feeling thus affecting how one handles some of these affectionate sentiments.

The child’s development with respect to personality and character revolves about love shown or given by the parents. Those children lacking the feel of love experiences negligence and fall short of proper foundation to build character. They undergo deficient in strength for a progressive growth. This is the explanation to existence of enough scientific evidence or correlation regarding the fact that lack of love for the baby diminishes its chances for survival. (Lerner and Damon, 2)

Peck went into deeper details over the definition of love by arguing whether falling in love translates to “romantic love, dependency, self-sacrifice, or even a feeling.” According to him, it probably has something to do with “nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth”. (81) “Love is the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth… Love is as love does.

Love is an act of will namely, both an intention and an action”. Personal motivation also entails ones option, meaning that it is not necessary for people to love but they choose to love.

It is impossible for a person to be a friend to others unless they are a friend to themselves. Originally, this concept applies for the analysis of love as well. The secrecy of attracting admiration depends on ability to attract and respect the personal attributes. Loving in a legitimate manner may be equitable to a desire as opposed to emotional.

The personal decision to love enables one to decide on venturing into a commitment to love regardless of the present feeling in the inner self at that particular period. Conversely, the possibility for a person to shun the personal acts catalyzed by the inner feelings of love is eminent.

One should love others than desire for the same offer of love from them. This calls for the ability to give love to others before they can reciprocate the same aspect. In line with Carter, (10) Loving others first requires one to stretch out of their personal limits, to do what they never longed to. When one stretches to do what they initially thought they would never be able to achieve, they feel victorious over great weakness that existed at the status quo.

Opening ones heart to embrace anyone who comes by or the situation that arises is the best life transformation experience. It is also one of the most important and courageous measure one would take since it entails personal will. When one is expressing love to strangers, then they are taking motivation to be acquainted with a new territory.

According to McGraw, (107) the development of the wisdom and love from the heart is therefore courage, which makes a person bold to taking the right, necessary and honourable action even when it is temporary and uncomfortable. In line with Perk, (80) “We must be willing to fail and to appreciate the truth that often “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.””

In his writing of, “The road less travelled”, Perk portrays love as the willingness to extend offer of self-service to others with the aim of nurturing personal and spiritual growth.

According to Perk (81), “A genuine loving individual will often take love as a constructive action towards a person he or she consciously dislikes or lacks actual feeling of love towards. One may perhaps even find the person repugnant in some way.” If a person stops, extending their will to give because of a feeling of poor encouragement, then the loving stops.

This is because love shows that people share their similarities while celebrating their differences. When such kind of relationship fails to exist, then the love is non-existantent.

People grow financially, socially, mentally and spiritually when they stretch their limits to help others. It is quite often to face challenges or coincidental situations when still attending other’s chores. The obvious test for love comes when one is tired. When it is the last thing one would wish to do, that is when someone emerges with dreadful need for assistance. The person then is arm-twisted to make a choice on what to undertake next among the possibilities in existence.

Helping others at their most eminent time of need calls, for one to emerge from the comfort zone past the point of pain, but the consents come in handy thereafter. (McGraw, 107) When working under this strain or stress, the ability to persevere to a point of agility is evident and thus the next time one faces similar situations, then the undertaking becomes easier. This is a good indication that loves for performance depends on the ability to undertake a task in a smooth manner.

It is human nature for one to become accustomed to a challenge if they faced similar position earlier and conquered. This causes the feeling for a need to face a more advanced or different challenge. The wish for growth depends on the ability to tackle the challenges involved. By allowing a move beyond the arbitrary accepted limitations, the capacity for love extends. (Perk, 82)

Relationships are the anxious and notorious opportunities to stretch the limits to a next level. This is because the soul is always ready to receive or exceed the limits whenever an opportunity arises.

Consistent with Fisher’s writing, (128) the initiation of love for a stranger or new task involves some deep soul concentration concerning the unrealistic expectations. This attention in most cases calls for some malleability to accommodate the involved persons. Most experienced people will definitely indicate that love would rarely cause them to remain at one point.

It provides a different chance, way of life or routine. The philosophy of love indicates that one should not seek love or affectionate from very far. In most cases, there is someone right behind the door waiting to help. The actions associated with the heart or those concerning love are very strong practically regardless of whether the language is poetic or not

In his writing (230), Perk considers love as a natural driving force that exists behind spiritual augmentation. The writer consideration over the existence of romantic love probably provides a view indicating some misconceptions in today’s or future understanding. He considers the issue of romantic love as mythical.

On the current understandings, love blossoms as a very tender, beautiful touch, a concern regarding care and provides the only moment one can stand out beyond personal feelings to embrace others and feel part of the whole. Most of the time people feel the need to compel their needs as opposed to revealing them. Exposure of personal wounds and weaknesses enable one to be accommodative of others needs too.

The most important feature is the love that arises through this kind of sharing. According to Pecks, (230) analysis, natural love is concern with dependency whereby the truth of love does not entail falling in love but the act of expanding boundaries of one’s ego to accommodate others. True love does not put up with the issue of “falling in love” but the spiritual nurturing of others’ feelings therefore that kind of love requires an effort.

In his perspective of love, Perk, (85) writing of “The Road Less Travelled” show that Love is not a feeling but an investment or probably an important activity. In line with his definition of love, “it is the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth” (85). It is a prime action of nurturing them than just the spiritual growth.

In the writing of “The road less travelled,” Perk, (231) also seeks to address the issue of Cathexis (explanation behind attraction of the opposite sex and love). The attraction is not love but an instinct controlling one to behave in a caring manner such as, cuddling something that they like for instance their pets or kids.

The issue of true love does not survive in isolation. Attraction has to exist in a sufficient and close manner for a consideration of straightforwardness. Love begins after one completes the attraction phase. Therefore it is an action proceeded by another.

It consists of what one does to another. As Perk (231) indicates in “The Road Less Travelled” writing, “Love is as love does”. It is an offer to others of what they need for growth. One must truly know and understand what the other person needs, to be in a position to provide. This indicates the need for initializing at ‘cathexis’ phase.

The issue of loving especially true loving might appear complicated from these perspective. When someone designates their love, then it is not from their want or because they cannot be in a position to own what they claim to love. The issue has nothing to do with the person. People love others from what they do and how they try to undertake tasks. This occurs through the analysis of personality, character, motivation, ability or strength.

Doubtlessly, one need to have sighted the best and the worst of the person they admire. What they see also need to be well and clearly understood. Through openness, people are in a position to express who they are. Living an open-ended lifestyle provides chance for others to consider their offers and it does not require one to dedicate the whole truth. This exercised courage assists one to step out and fight fear.

From a personal point of view, love is certainly a mystery that forms its basis from nature. It is probably comparable to gravitational pull, an unstoppable force or a vast, invisible anxiety that connects things that are alike. People always long for love and wish to love events without any strong basis for their actions. When they find the love, then they awaken to it because it presents care and well wishes without an expectation or demand for any kind of remuneration.

This is a good indication that the well-being of the loved person is not different from the person who expresses that love. True love calls for one to be trustworthy and therefore the love expressed to others is an indication that there exists trust. This is also an indication that the person expressing it is confident and despite the type of outcome, the aspect of love can still exist.

The importance of love for the community is to unite lives, expand people’s thoughts especially about others, connect different people regardless of their origin, race or ethnical group, enhance their personal views and dignify them by nurturing the inner feelings.

Love is a universal feeling experienced by everyone or every living being on the earth. The living being in this case is an indication that conceivably, love is not an attribute that is limited to human beings. It is a strange but unique emotional feeling that most likely has no certain definition one could use to describe it.

The characteristic of love revolves about an attached feeling whereby someone feels affectionate towards another or something else. The feeling is very strong and most certainly the reason why it forms a basis for discussion. The reason why people consider love is for the reason that it is a very important aspect in human life that satisfies human emotional needs.

Humans have the innate responsibility to offer and feel loved. The biological structure indicates that the feeling of love is responsible for the formation and maintenance of the societal development especially morally and socially. The birth of a child causes the parents to forget their urgent needs and divert all their attention to the newborn due to the strong feeling of love.

Love is therefore a great thriller or catalyst that enables people to achieve exigent tasks, which probably would remain unaccomplished if love never existed. “Love is an enigmatic emotion that exceeds all the boundaries to change people’s lives”. (Wallerstein, Judith and Sandra, 19)

The magnificence experience of love allows humans to express each other’s feelings with kindness and concern such that love can take a number of emotions. It is an ambiguous ubiquitous relation binding people together in different formats.

Love can be expressed in various ways including the “a passionate lover’s kiss, a tender mother’s touch, a fatherly concern or a brotherly, sisterly affection”. (Wallerstein, Judith and Sandra, 19) The sages have found out that everything and everyone has the ability to expresses love if they nurture their feelings.

Carter, Kasey. M. “ Loving Others: Faithful Crushers ”, Juvenile fiction journal Tate Publishing, 2009, Vol 1, p 10, pp24

Fisher, Helen .E. “Why we love: the nature and chemistry of romantic love” H. Holt Publishers, 2004

Hurlock, Elizabeth. B. “ Developmental psychology: a life-span approach” Tata McGraw-Hill, 2001

Lazarus, Richard. S. “ Stress and Emotion: A New Synthesis ”. New York, Springer. 1999, pp.254

Lerner, Richard. M. and Damon, William. “ Handbook of Child Psychology: Social, Emotional, and personality development: Volume 3 of Handbook of Child Psychology”, John Wiley and Sons publishers, 2006, pp 2

McGraw, Patricia Romano. “Seeking the Wisdom of the Heart: Reflection on the Seven Stages of Spiritual Development”. Baha’i Publishing Trust, 2007

Perk, Scott. M. “The Road Less Travelled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth” . New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, Touchstone, 1978, pp.81, 116-117

Vacek, Edward Collins. “Love, Human and Divine: The Heart of Christian Ethics Moral Traditions and Moral Arguments Series ” Georgetown University Press, 1996, pp 248

Wallerstein, Judith and Sandra, Blakeslee (1995), “ The good marriage: How and Why love lasts”. Boston: Houghton Mifflin publishers

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IvyPanda. (2019, October 18). What Love Is and Why It Matters. https://ivypanda.com/essays/what-love-is-and-why-it-matters/

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IvyPanda . (2019) 'What Love Is and Why It Matters'. 18 October.

IvyPanda . 2019. "What Love Is and Why It Matters." October 18, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/what-love-is-and-why-it-matters/.

1. IvyPanda . "What Love Is and Why It Matters." October 18, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/what-love-is-and-why-it-matters/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "What Love Is and Why It Matters." October 18, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/what-love-is-and-why-it-matters/.

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How to Write An Expository Essay About Love

Before you do anything else, because this is such a broad topic, you should figure out your thesis, or statement of purpose, which is the ultimate point you want to make in your essay. You can write five different kinds of expository essays: how-to, comparison, descriptive, cause/effect, and problem/solution.

Remember, expository essays are meant to be factual and neutral, rather than opinion-based, but you can use your thesis to put your opinion across.

Here are some sample thesis statements you could try.

Thesis idea 1: Love has been defined very differently in different times and cultures, so that what we think of as love now is not at all how it was considered 500 years ago.

Thesis idea 2: Falling in love at first sight is the subject of many songs, poems, and romance novels, but it is also a real phenomenon.

Thesis idea 3: I can show you how to get the date of your dreams, just by following these seven easy steps!

Once you have your thesis sorted out, you should start by making a short outline of the points you want to make. These will eventually form the body of your paper.

Now for your introduction. Start with a hook, something that captures the attention of your audience. At this same time, also make known what sort of audience you are expecting to read this. Is it forlorn lovers, or your fellow students, or even the world at large?

The last component of your introduction is your thesis. Go ahead and put it in, then move on to the body of your essay, which you will have already outlined.

The outline makes it easy. You should have at least three points, which will become paragraphs, and they should all back up your thesis. This really is the meat of expository essay writing. All your evidence should be contained in these paragraphs.

Once you’ve fleshed out your outline fully and put your points into the essay, using transition words like however, although, and therefore to move between points, it’s time to write your conclusion.

Your conclusion should start with a brief summary of the points you’ve made and then you should restate your thesis reflecting the new knowledge that you (and your audience) has now. Then close by framing your essay in the context of the larger question, or by asking about another aspect of something you’ve discussed.

Here are a couple of examples.

Conclusion idea 1: In summary, love is multi-faceted and complicated no matter where or when you live, but the key to making it work, in any era or culture, is good communication. Finding love is a challenge, and keeping it is an even bigger challenge. How will love seem to our descendants 500 years from now? Surely this will be as different from us as we consider the courtly love of the past.

Conclusion idea 2: I’m not sure it’s possible to fully define love. Thousands of philosophers over the years have tried and not one of them has really managed to completely sum it up. All I know is that it is necessary, beautiful, intangible, and priceless.

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Thesis Statement About Love

Love thesis statement: perfection always betrays our prudence and even our interest.

Mutual love is the most beautiful that can be felt, when there is a bond so formed, so beautiful, so complicit. That you feel that nothing in the world can corrupt that affective bond. Everything works well; it goes on track in your own way, in your way of seeing life. When you’re in love everything seems nicer, you’re happy, nothing bothers you, and you do not even care about the problems, sometimes in a different way “with love”. Everyday life seems more wonderful in fact everything goes spectacular. “Love is long-suffering, it is benign; love has no envy, love is not boastful, it is not puffed up; He does not do anything wrong, he does not seek his own, he does not get irritated, he does not hold a grudge.

Infamous! How can you believe that this way of thinking is correct? Humans are not machines, not plastic, they have feelings, love, hate, sadness and they are governed day by day with them. Why would you ever believe in the man who was unfaithful? Loss of self-esteem: your woman’s ego is trampled, you feel ugly, nothing fits you, you fight with everyone for stupidity, this guy mentally and emotionally ruined you, you start to see problems in you … when it’s not like that.

Page Contents

Thesis statement about love: Love and property

If indeed love is experienced outside of property then people are imprisoned for love.

The improper of the experience of love is its public and community condition; that is, a particular form of intervention on the community violated in the materiality of its territory.

People are guilty of this, above all.

And for such a crime, there is no jurisprudence or law; only a reaffirmation of the universal rights: property as a foundation and property as a social relation. As long as this is assumed as a given thing, every loving expression will be condemned and materially punished.

People stressed the very fabric of the political apparatus of Jujuy to publicly re-establish the ethics of the inappropriate. It gave rise to scenes of public embraces between injured parties and festive experiences outside the private sphere.

Loving is outside of property.

Thesis about love: Love and iconoclasm

If indeed love produces iconoclasm then people are prey for love.

Iconoclasm is presented as a type of register that produces imbalances on the recount of the sensitive. People inscribed the images of the violated of the province on the terrain of the prohibited, on the prohibition of its condition.

The public irruption of this love experience in Jujuy could only occur at the cost of producing intolerable gestures as a way of undoing the sediment images of neatness. To demolish that and to summon the communitarian manifestation of expressions of divertimento and affection between the displaced ones, turned out to be an impossible postcard in the eyes of the ruling businessmen.

People have recovered a portrait of celebration that was historically confined to the back of the neat room. The drive to enroll in the terrain of mountainous civility has been a flagrant crime and a form of plebeian violence: the cursed gesture of insinuating celebratory equity.

Thematic statement examples for love: Love and the archive

If it could not be erased it is because its instructive character is deeper than its grace. Its walls and images today become historical documents, in the registration of signings and nomenclatures, in marks of truth.

A file that, even destroyed, shows a scene acquired rights – exceptionally exceptional – detached from the welfare and donative practice. It illuminates a movement within the limits of what is possible, in its frames of social intelligibility. It illuminates the modes of an affective expression and the daily forms of attachment in precariousness.

A damaged landscape can become an official file especially when you never had one before. Granting that entity is a political gesture that allows us to assume that traditionally relegated expressions of the public scene can effectively be institutionalized.

Theme statements about love: Love and hermeneutics

Love is declared, it is public. And it is also ambivalent since its expression never appears alone but through the emergence of a superposition of affections: shame, pain, pleasure.

To declare is to take the floor and introduce it in an interpretation register. An affective hermeneutics. From there, another story can then be written whose parameters are not fully governed by the criteria of neatness.

The Alto Feeder and the pools, the schools, the recreation and meeting spaces are inscribed as a record of the history of the violated subjects in Jujuy. They give an account of an interpretation of the materiality of the present and construct a prism through which to look at the political, social and cultural processes of the past.

It is an experiential hermeneutics that transcends mere community. That’s why it becomes dangerous: because it pretends to become official and to dispute other ways of interpreting things.

Love and democracy – love thesis statement

Love has no sovereign power.

It does not offer guarantees.

It is not a state.

Maybe because of this, it can be a democratic gesture: a gesture that incorporates, with all its lability, the possibility of a dignified and genuine existence in public life.

Perhaps for this reason, it is also an act of responsibility of and against the violated: a way of responding to the interpellations of power and a community “taking charge” of those actions.

People thus understood love and democracy; moving away from naive and fallible views and, above all, motivated by the commitment to institutionalize – symbolically and materially – an experience of extending rights. He understood that this passage, from a love ethic to a genuinely democratic gesture, is the testimony of a praxis that effectively touched deep-rooted interests in the economic, political and cultural frameworks of a province historically unpunished.

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Examining Poems about Love and Loss

Leonardo da Vinci, the master of art and science, is said to have been asked the great secret of his creativity and brilliance. His answer? "Saper Vedere," or to know how to see. 1 By studying poetry, with a focus on sonnets, elegies, and ecphrasis, my hope is to arm my students with the tools they will need to know how to "see" literature, poetry and art in a deeper and more meaningful way.

Unlike da Vinci, my AP English Literature students often struggle when they attempt to examine, no to mention articulate, what they see. As Deborah Samuel notes, students "resist understanding why they respond in the way that they do." 2 This is particularly troubling for me because, despite the emphasis that is placed on metacognition (awareness of one's own strategies for learning or thinking) at my school, my students want to resist being metacognitive. Furthermore, when faced with the daunting task of studying poetry, many students are stopped in their tracks. "I hate poetry" is a phrase I hear often. Perhaps some students feel, as Richard Andrews (as quoted by Benton) says, that poetry is "an enclosed, self–referential world to which only an elite gain access" 3 . Or, some students may resist poetry due to "its associations with the feminine for 'macho' boys, many of whom [resist] reading of any sort and [reserve] a special contempt for poetry". 4 Whatever the case may be, it seems to me that when studying poetry, my students are likely to be apathetic, if not downright resistant.

Thus, I will work to counteract these feelings about poetry in my unit, "Examining Poems about Love and Loss", which will take place in my Advanced Placement English Literature course. This class is comprised of thirty–two 11 th graders. For many of these students, this will be their first high school course dedicated solely to literature, since we teach a Humanities–based curriculum in the 9 th and 10 th grade, focused more on history and literature about history than dedicated to the study of literature. This unit, devoted to sonnets, elegies, and ecphrasis, will take approximately four weeks, during which time I will meet with my students for two or three blocks a week (blocks are 100 minute class periods).

As an AP English Literature teacher, one of my responsibilities is to foster an understanding of poetic form and its connection to meaning. Until I began teaching this course, I shied away from teaching poetry at all. Part of this was due to student resistance, as I indicated previously, but much of my hesitation was due to my own aversion to poetry. I had never studied it formally, and found it obscure and enigmatic. However, once I began to read essays on poetry, and discovered Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook , I was converted.

Oliver's book expatiates on the value of teaching poetic writing, emphasizing the need to study poetry in order to write it. She states that "poetry is a river; many voices travel in it; poem after poem moves along in the exciting crests and falls of the river waves". 5 For me, Oliver's words confirmed the importance of teaching poetry to my students. The poem itself is a conversation between the poet and the reader. If I could help my students learn the vocabulary to be a part of this conversation, then they would gain educational capital that could enhance their learning experience and potential for success on the AP exam.

Poetry also allows me to instill "saper vedere" in my students. According to Dinah Livingstone, poets were once thought to be "seers" and "the germ of a poem is a moment of intense seeing (which includes feeling), an insight , becoming a 'seeing how to say it', which both clarifies the seeing for the seer…and [helps] others see with you". 6 I want to provide an entry point for my students to become part of this conversation regarding "seeing".

How do I open my students' eyes to truly see poetry? Initially, I will do this through a study of poetic forms. Generally, the form of a poem refers to its architectural makeup. For instance, does it fit into a commonly used structure, such as a fourteen–line sonnet, or even more specifically, three quatrains and a couplet? Or might it fit into the category of free verse, which, despite its description as "free", challenges poets to compensate for the lack of conventional form? These distinctions are crucial for my students, so that their opinions can become infused with the nomenclature surrounding poetry. Also, I want them to recognize aspects of meaning that are shaped by these forms. As Frances Mayes indicates, "The form of a good poem occurs simultaneously with the meaning, not as a separate phenomenon." 7 The interplay between the form and the meaning will help my students know how to see.

In an ongoing effort to cull from the multitude of available materials, I wanted to narrow my unit to a theme that can be found both in poetry and in my students' lives. I looked no further than the themes dealing with love and loss. For my students, who are 16 or 17, love is omnipresent, whether they are in the throes of adolescent crushes and relationships themselves, or live vicariously through the portrayal of love in the media. All such relationships shape and impact teenagers' identity. And with love comes its crushing counterpart, loss. Students experience loss in a variety of ways, from the loss of innocence to the breakup of the traditional family unit or even the loss of a family member or loved one. In exploring poems that center on these two themes, my students will have a built–in frame of reference: their own lives.

Finally, I have needed to narrow down the poetic forms we will address in this unit. Naturally, sonnets and elegies lend themselves well to themes of love and loss. Sonnets, in their brevity and strict form, are likely to emphasize one central idea, and build on that idea as the poem continues. It forces the poet to focus on this one central idea, and thus will allow my students to grapple with that idea undistractedly. Elegies, though not as strict in form, are "most often a poem of meditation, usually on love or death", 8 and are thus a natural complement to my unit. Finally, ecphrasis will enhance our study of sonnets and elegies by providing visual images to accompany the poems and reveal the dialogue that exists not only between artists and viewers, but also between artists and writers. In some cases, these ecphrastics may pair with art that embodies love or loss. The layering of art and poetry will provide new entry points for my students, particularly those who are visual or spatial learners—versus my verbal or linguistic learners.

Discussion Goals

One of my primary goals as a teacher is to help my students find, and then use, their voices in academic settings and beyond. In order to achieve that goal, I first need to lessen my students' affective filters. "Affective filter" is a term coined by Steven Krashen, based on his research in second language acquisition, and it is "a screen of emotion that can block language acquisition or learning if it [makes] the users…too self–conscious or too embarrassed to take risks during communicative exchanges". 9 My AP students enter my classroom lacking the requisite vocabulary to speak about poetry. As we uncover basic terms and strategies for studying poetry, I believe that my students' affective filters will be reduced. My hope is that this will diminish the stress that students tend to feel when studying poetry, and will open their eyes to the underlying beauty and complexity of poetry. Also, since the language and structure of the poems may be foreign or challenging to my students, the subjects of love and loss provide entry points through which students can discuss the less verbally current poems in the unit. Once my students recognize that they can conquer the daunting task of analyzing poetry, they can apply this confidence to other areas of their lives in which they have felt silenced or subdued.

Writing Goals

By the end of this unit, I want my students to have gained momentum regarding academic writing. First of all, I want them to learn the language of analyzing poetry, such terms of vocabulary as stanza, couplet, and volta, as well as rhetorical devices like personification or metonymy. Once they gain more facility with this language, I would like my students to be able to develop written assertions about a particular poem in the form of a thesis, and be able to prove the validity of this thesis through the use of well–chosen evidence in an effectively written essay. I would also like my students to be able to draw comparisons between poems, as well as between a poem and a work of art.

Finally, my other objectives are all grounded in the California state standards and in the goals in the College Board's AP English Literature Course Descriptions. The standards being met by this unit can be found in Appendix 1. They focus on reading and writing skills.

Poetic Forms

Sonnets were originally created in Sicily in the thirteenth century, and were named after the Italian word for "little song": sonneto . Sonnets, even in this earliest period, contained fourteen lines. The sonnet form made its way to Italy later in the century, and the most famous Italian writers of sonnets were Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarca (also known as Petrarch). According to Burt and Mikics, "Petrarch is the most influential sonnet writer in history." 1 0 The Sicilian form was popularized by Petrarch and is now commonly referred to as the Petrarchan sonnet. This form contains an octave (an eight line section) and a sestet (a six line section). The rhyme scheme in a Petrarchan poem follows this pattern: abbaabba cdecde (or, in the sestet, it may be cdcdcd ). Often, the octave "offers an admirably unified pattern and leads to the volta or "turn" of thought in the more varied sestet…the sestet, on the other hand, with its element of unpredictability…implies an acceleration of thought and feeling." 1 1

Petrarch and Dante both wrote extensively about love. Petrarch's poems often center on Laura, his beloved, who may or may not have existed. He wrote over three hundred poems (including many sonnets) about this unrequited love, typically discussing everything from her lovely features to metaphors comparing her beauty to precious objects and nature.

In the late 1500s, Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard brought sonnets to England after their travels in Italy. William Shakespeare is perhaps the best known of the British sonnet writers in the early 1600s, having written 154 sonnets that were published in 1609. It was through Shakespeare's work that a new form of sonnet was popularized, and was thus known as the Shakespearean sonnet. This sonnet is marked by three quatrains (four line stanzas), ending with a couplet. The typical rhyme scheme for a Shakespearean sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg .

Shakespeare's sonnets, as with many poets who succeeded him, focused on secular love. The sonnet sequence was, in a sense, a journal for these poets to express their feelings, frustrations, and judgments about love. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, poets such as Samuel Coleridge and William Wordsworth took up the sonnet, extending it to be a form "into which poets could pour almost anything." 1 2 Elizabeth Barrett Browning, for instance, subsequently used sonnets to document her courtship with her eventual husband, Robert Browning, while Christina Rossetti used the form to expound on everything from erotic love to political issues. The twentieth century, in its embrace of modernism, was when some poets looked to sonnets to reclaim a poetic history of sorts. Edna St. Vincent Millay, for instance, rejected modernism in favor of the sonnet, as did Harlem Renaissance poets like Claude McKay. As poets continue to play with (and break) the form of the sonnet, this form provides an opportunity for poets to "remind us that the present is surprisingly like the past…that we do not differ so much from the people who love and fear and grieve in poems by Sidney and Shakespeare." 1 3

One sonnet that I plan to use in my unit is "A Superscription" by Italian–British poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who wrote it in 1869, seven years after his wife committed suicide. It contains overtones of both love and loss. The poem reads:

After my students participate in small group work to analyze the poem, we will reconvene to unpack this work together. What do my students see? What poetic devices are being used? What are we learning about the complicated nature of love and loss?

The title gestures towards the possibility that this may, in fact, be an ecphrastic poem (which is explained in more detail below). A superscription is something written or engraved on the surface of, outside, or above something else. In this case, perhaps Rossetti is referring to the writing of an artist at the bottom of a finished canvas. Hence, Rossetti is beckoning us to imagine that the poem is a painting, with an allegorical figure (the "I" narrator) at its center. According to Burt and Mikics, this "I" is the poet's muse, "which also encompass(es) the poet in (her) relentless grip." 1 4 She is described as "Might–have–been", "No–more", "Too–late" and "Farewell", as if to say that this figure is a lost love, or a grim reminder of what the reader could have had. With my students, I would look for evidence of who this speaker is. Is it Rossetti's wife, who slipped into alcoholism and killed herself after having a stillborn baby? This might be the case, since she is a "shaken shadow." Or is it one of his alleged mistresses, such as Jane Burden, the wife of his business partner? After all, he does describe her as "Might–have–been", which could be a clue that he wishes he had married Jane Burden before his partner had the chance. Next, we would examine the structure. How does the poem build momentum from the octave to the sestet? Does it change tone dramatically? I would push my students in the direction of the sestet, and particularly the last line, as it is the culmination of the sleepless terror of the sestet. Why did Rossetti use the term "sleepless"? It could be a description of the lack of emotion in the muse's eyes, but more likely, it is a reflection of the poet's own agony over these lost loves. The eyes are described as "commemorative', which is a meditation on this lost love. Further still, the "co– (meaning 'with') implies the lasting bondage of the poet to his muse, who ambushes his heart." 1 5 This exploration of diction in the poem would enhance my students' ability to closely examine every turn of phrase in poetry. As Paul Fry suggests, these turns of phrase are the "tricks that only poetry can play."

One other area that I would encourage my students to examine is the use of symbolism in the poem. Rossetti mentions glass (to describe the muse's eyes) and a shell that she holds up to her ear (another ecphrastic reference to a Renaissance iconography of shells). It is crucial to remember that a shell creates echoes when placed next to one's ear, and "the sounds it makes are dead, a mere trace of the past, as is the vision in the glass in the second quatrain." 1 6 Thus, these inanimate objects could speak to the belief that love is frail and fleeting, like a shell or glass, condemned to reflect the deathly echoes of a lost love.

The term elegy derives from the Greek word, elegos, or mournful song. 1 7 The form of an elegy is not standard; in other words, some poets wrote elegies in iambic couplets, but throughout the centuries, poets have experimented with many forms found under the umbrella of elegy. More commonly, the elegy is marked by a commonality in theme, rather than form. Elegies are meant to "lament, praise and console. All are responses to the experience of loss." 1 8 The term elegy has been used to describe poetry and songs as far back as 7 th century BC. Most commonly, these poems were set to music and commemorated a particular event, such as the death of a loved one. These poems eventually became commemorations of the passing of a famous or influential person (also known as a funeral elegy).

By the twelfth and thirteenth century, elegies began to deal not just with death, but other topics as well. They could include political commentaries or allegories, for instance. These commentaries and allegories were still frequently related to death and grieving, but poets found it easier to shroud grief in these other topics. In the sixteenth century in England, the "connection between death and elegies may have been strengthened by Donne…[and] Milton, [who], in his pastoral Lycidas establish(ed) definitely the elegy as a separate genre in English, the concerns of which are lamenting for the dead and searching for consolation." 1 9 Often, poets used a three quatrain progression to elucidate the stages of coping with death—the first stage being the occasion of grief, then the expression of that grief, and finally the acceptance or transcendence of that grief. 2 0

In the last one hundred years, elegies have become an important reminder of the power of mourning. According to Jahan Ramazani, mourning rites have been stripped of their power due to industrialization—with the upsurge of hospitals, hospices, and funeral homes, death has increasingly been relegated to these spaces or perceived as a "taboo" subject. 2 1 In contrast to the elegies of earlier periods, which provided a sense of consolation to those who mourn, Ramazani suggests that many modern elegies express a lack of resolution, often marked by a resistance to consolation or an outright anger at the dead, or at God, or even at elegies themselves. Modern elegies of this type that I will study with my students may include Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art", William Carlos Williams' "Death", and Anne Sexton's "A Curse Against Elegies."

Another poem I intend to use is "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter" by John Crowe Ransom, which deals with the precarious nature of human life. The poem is about the death of a young, graceful girl. This poem will meet my need to look at how form influences the meaning of an elegy, because the poem is written in four quatrains, each rich with imagery ("noon apple dreams and scuttle goose–fashion"), hyperbole ("such speed in her little body"), symbolism (the geese, the bells), juxtaposition (her vivacity juxtaposed with her death) and paradox (life–death). This poem is also an ideal vehicle for teaching my students how to "see". Ransom never says that word "death" in the poem. Rather, he indicates her death through the euphemistic description of "her brown study", a repetition of his description of her in the beginning of the poem, when she was alive. This movement of thought is in fact reminiscent of the initial shock at a death, when mourners are awakened to their memories of the deceased being alive, and may feel an inability to articulate, much less accept, that their loved one is gone. Finally, this poem can serve as a meditation on death in general. No matter how much "lightness" one has, life will eventually be "stopped" by death.

Ecphrasis (ekphrasis) is the poetic description of a man–made object. The word is derived from the Greek, with the roots ek and phrasis , or 'out' and 'speak'. Ecphrastic poems, according to John Hollander, may be described as "those which involve descriptions or other sorts of verbal representation of works of art." 2 2 The first type is known as notional ecphrasis, or the description of purely fictional art. Early examples include Homer's description of the shield of Achilles in The Iliad , or Dante's description of the white marble bank full of carvings in Purgatory. On the other hand, actual ecphrasis is a poem that deals with a physical object that actually exists or has existed, such as Emma Lazarus describing the Statue of Liberty in her poem "The New Colossus". Finally, unassessable actual ecphrastics are poems that discuss an actual piece of art that is no longer in existence or unavailable to be seen, such as the clock in Gjertrud Schnackenberg's "Nightfishing."

Ecphrastic poetry deals with the interaction between the poet and the painter, or the poem and painting. At times, this relationship is tense. Poets may express their own beliefs in the poem, and imbue meaning in or make sense of what they are writing. The painter, though, may be free to luxuriate in the silence of art—the painting can simply "be" (or so the poet thinks). Additionally, poets may, at times, impose their own gaze on the painting, as in the very male point of view in XJ Kennedy's "Nude Descending a Staircase", written in response to Duchamp's painting of the same name.

In other poems about art, though, there is a reverence attached to the art's silence, conveyed by the poet's use of hushed language, with words like "stillness" or "silence." Poetry is, by nature, a conversation, and poets may admire painting for its ability to be still. However, another way of approaching ecphrasis is that it encourages an equal exchange and interdependency between the two forms of art. The process of writing about art allows both media to build on and supplement one another.

Teaching Philosophy

Before diving into the strategies of this specific unit, I feel I must say a few words about my pedagogical approach. Essentially, my belief is that the optimal situation in which learning occurs is one where students are actively engaged. Paulo Freire, best known for his book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed , supports this belief. Among his many ideas, Freire places great emphasis on the use of dialogue in an educational setting. As M. K. Smith states:

Paulo Freire's…insistence [was] that dialogue involves respect. It should not involve one person acting on another, but rather people working with each other. Too much education, Paulo Freire argues, involves "banking" – the educator making "deposits" in the educatee. 2 3

Thus, in my classroom, I encourage peer–to–peer dialogue, as well as small group discussion and whole class discussion, facilitated (but not led) by me. Rather than taking center stage, I encourage my students to make meaning together and become more autonomous in their thinking, rather than relying on me for the "right" answer. This, according to Freire, leads to a sense of community and social awareness. Freire also postulates that those who have been forced into voicelesness, in other words the oppressed, are thus given a voice in this mode of education. 2 4 Since many students feel voiceless—owing to being raised to defer to adults' voices, or because of second language barriers, or general shyness—helping them find a voice in my classroom is a central goal. If they achieve this goal, my students may find a voice not only in class, but also in their communities and beyond.

Building on the Freirian model, I look towards the constructivist theory to guide my pedagogy. Jacqueline Grennon Brooks writes that "constructing knowledge talks about how we as the learners are reformulating, refiltering, relooking at…the way that we see our world, that the teacher can't give away explanations, the teacher can't give away knowledge, the student can't receive it passively from the teacher." 2 5 In my classroom, this constructivist approach leads to a spiral of learning, where we often return to and deepen our knowledge of concepts, such as symbolism or imagery, rather than declare "we've learned that" and move on. Consequently, my unit will build on the notion that we are all learners in my classroom, and need to be constantly revisiting and re–envisioning our ideas in order to gain a deep and authentic understanding of what we study.

In this poetry unit, I plan to use a series of sonnets and elegies, some of which are ecphrastic, to build poetic vocabulary and writing skills in my AP English Literature class. This unit will take place over a four–week period. My school has a rotating block schedule, so I see my students every other day, either Monday–Wednesday–Friday or Tuesday–Thursday, depending on the week. Thus, in those four weeks, I will have ten class sessions to complete this unit.

In the first week, we will begin with introductory activities. I usually start with Seamus Heaney's "Sonnet #5" and show my students how to annotate it—noting the meaning of the poem by looking at its structure, speaker, tone, poetic devices, and deeper truths. We will then read an article about how to analyze poetry, and this session will end with a homework assignment in which students will be given an article on how to read Shakespeare's poems, as well as an illustrated version of Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18." In the second session, I will conduct a mini–lesson on the history of the sonnet. Then, we will discuss our ideas about "Sonnet 18," which will segue into studying Shakespeare's "Sonnet 138" ("When my love swears that she is made of truth") as a classic example of a Shakespearean sonnet. Students will be given a homework assignment to read, annotate, and develop a thesis for "Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130" ("My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun"). To end the first week, I will work with my students on how to build a strong compare/contrast essay, and will have them read "Sonnet 43" ("How Do I Love Thee") by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Their homework will be to read "Paradise Saved (Another Version of the Fall)" by A.D. Hope and complete a writing exercise in which they contrast the poem with the Bible version of the Adam and Eve story. Throughout these lessons, I will point my students towards new vocabulary, such as the terminology of the sonnet form and any new literary devices that appear in the poems. They will have a master list of literary vocabulary to reference as well.

The second week of class will begin with a fishbowl discussion based on the students' homework from the previous weekend. This fishbowl will conclude with a timed write in which I ask students to compare/contrast the poem to the Bible story. Following that session, I will introduce ecphrasis, and end this portion of the unit by giving a lesson on "Not My Best Side" by UA Fanthorpe, which is not only an ecphrastic poem but one that also provides a feminist perspective on classic notions of Arthurian romance.

In the third week, we will transition into elegies. To begin, we will read "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter" by John Crowe Ransom, followed by activities regarding Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art", William Carlos Williams' "Death", and Anne Sexton's "A Curse Against Elegies." Throughout these lessons, students will be learning how to see, through pair work, small group work, and fishbowl discussions, as well as in–class timed writes. We will close out the section on elegies by doing a case study of Gjertrud Schnackenberg, in which we carefully read her ecphrastic poems "Nightfishing" and "Self Portrait of Ivan Generalic."

Finally, we will go to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. After a docent–led tour, I will ask my students to choose a piece of art in the museum that inspires feelings of love or loss for them. They will spend time in silent reflection with their chosen piece of art, and will begin to construct an ecphrastic poem, which they will revise and complete as their final project of the unit.

Throughout the unit, we will keep a class list of themes regarding love and loss, which we learn through the study of each of the poems. Additionally, students will write at least three in–class timed writes and one or two practice multiple choice tests, modeled after the multiple choice portions of the AP English Literature exam.

Discussion Strategies

In keeping with my constructivist approach, I place great emphasis on discussion in my classroom. This takes on different forms, depending on the day and the poem we will be discussing. Generally, though, I use four discussion strategies: small group work, write–pair–share, jigsaws, and fishbowl discussions.

Small Group Work

When the unit begins, I split my class into eight poetry groups, with four students in each group. Whenever possible, I try to group students heterogeneously by skill level, gender, and, to some extent, personality and general speaking skills. These groups will meet three to four times during the course of the unit, within which time they will be given four copies of a poem that I have chosen, and will use the SOAPSTone strategy, discussed below. My expectation, repeated often to the students, is that they will actively participate and take notes. Students will come to expect that I will call on them at random when we reconvene as a whole class, so they use their small group work notes to contribute to class discussions on the poem they have worked through in their small group. I have found that shy students gain confidence when they can look to their notes, which allows richer conversations overall.

Write–Pair–Share

Write–Pair–Share is a discussion strategy that was originally developed by Frank Lyman, and its goal is to foster discussion where many students feel empowered to participate. First, the teacher poses a question, or problem, or quotation. Students then silently write their responses. I typically give two to five minutes, depending on the complexity of my question. Next, students pair up (or I choose pairs for them) and they discuss their responses out loud. Finally, the class reconvenes as a whole, and I call on a number of students to share out what they discussed with their partner. At times, students may be asked to share their own ideas, but in other instances, students may be asked to share their partner's ideas.

I like this strategy for several reasons. It allows my students to gather their thoughts, particularly when I ask them an open–ended or provocative question. Additionally, it allows space for students to then "test" their answers out on one another. They may find, in the Pair portion of the activity, that they could rephrase their idea for clarity's sake. Or, they may find their partner's idea compelling, complementary, or contradictory to their own, which may force them to re–think or deepen their own response. Once the students have processed their own ideas, tested them out with a partner, and gained clarity on their ideas, they may have more confidence to speak during the whole class discussion.

Throughout the year, I use the fishbowl technique in my AP Lit class. Since I have thirty–two students in my class, whole–class discussions tend to be dominated by eight to ten students. In order to quell these powerful voices, I provide space for my quieter students to take the stage.

The fishbowl strategy has three parts: preparation, discussion, and debrief. In the first part, students prepare for the fishbowl discussion in their aforementioned poetry groups. I provide students with a poem to study and a handout, such as the SOAPSTone handout described below, for them to structure their conversation. Then, after a predetermined amount of time (usually about 40 minutes), we reorganize the room into two concentric circles. The "inside" circle (or fishbowl) is populated by one third of my students, or roughly 11 students, whom I have chosen. The "outside" circle consists of the rest of the class. We complete this activity three times during the unit, so that each student participates in one fishbowl.

For the next 30 to 45 minutes, the fishbowl group participates in a discussion that is observed by the outside circle and by me. My general rule of thumb is that I say nothing during these discussions, but I do allow for an empty desk, which can be used by students from the outside circle who have something compelling and brief to contribute. Otherwise, the outside circle is taking notes. Once the discussion is over, the class reviews how the fishbowl went. I ask first for "warm" feedback (what went well) from the outside circle, then the inside circle. I then ask for "cool" feedback (what could have gone better) from the outside, then inside, circles. Finally, I give warm and cool feedback and explain what I would like to see in the next fishbowl, and afterwards, I grade the students on a fishbowl rubric (see Appendix 2).

The Jigsaw strategy is a prime example of cooperative learning, or students actively learning from and engaging with one another. Simply put, jigsaw is a classroom–based team sport. No student can be successful unless all students work together as a team, or cooperate, and equally value all voices.

The basic structure of a Jigsaw is twofold. First, students shift into small groups, typically of four students (in my class, this would be their poetry group). These groups are given a task that is different from those of the rest of the groups in the class. In this unit, I would use a jigsaw if I wanted to address several poems in one class period, and would give a different poem to each group and ask them to do SOAPSTone with their poem. I would then give them an allotted amount of time to work together with their group to complete their task, making sure that every member of their group has written proof of the work they've done. When the allotted time is over, they shift into new groups, based on numbers I have handed out during their poetry group work time. Once they are in their new groups, I give them a new task (which usually involves sharing out what they did in their first group) to complete. Thus, each student becomes an expert on the work they did in their poetry group, and shares their knowledge with a new group of students.

Analysis and Writing Strategies

When students get into their poetry groups, the most common exercise that I ask them to complete is SOAPSTone. In brief, here are the guidelines for SOAPSTONE, which I either project on an overhead projector or distribute in handout form:

Subjec t––elevator pitch. Describe what the poem is about in no more than 3–4 sentences.
Occasion ––did something happen to make the speaker want to express something?
Audience ––To whom is the speaker speaking? Why?
Purpose ––What will the speaker gain from this poem? What might the poet gain?
Speaker(s) ––Who is the speaker? Why did the poet choose this narrative style?
Tone —what adjectives would you use to describe this poem? Why?

Each group is then expected to interact with the poem to figure out the answers to each element of SOAPSTone. They make annotations on the poems by underlining words that stand out to them, circling literary devices, and writing in the margins. They also take notes on their discoveries and support their ideas with quotes (words or phrases) from the poem. An additional question that I always include with SOAPSTone is: What literary devices are used in the poem, and how do they add to the meaning of the overall poem? Students may use the literary devices they find to support their ideas on tone, speaker, or any other part of SOAPSTone. Finally, I ask students to discuss what they think the message of the poem is. I request that they steer clear of clichs and instead focus on the "truth" of the poem. When they are finished examining the poem in small groups, we share out ideas in a larger group discussion.

Thesis Drills

This strategy typically follows some of the previous strategies, but always occurs after students have been exposed to a poem and have arrived, as a class, at an understanding of the form and meaning of the poem.

In a thesis drill, I give my students an essay prompt, modeled after (or taken directly from) an AP English Literature essay question from a previous AP exam. Typically, the students then go home and write a thesis in response to the essay question, as their homework assignment. Their thesis should show their ability to exhibit clarity and sophistication in their writing. Below their thesis idea, I ask them to brainstorm evidence from the poem that they could use to support their thesis. Most students complete this task by creating a bullet point list, each bullet being one piece of evidence followed by brief ideas about how to use the evidence. When the class meets again, we begin the day by sharing out thesis ideas. I may ask a student to write their thesis on the board and then ask the others to assess it and brainstorm ideas about how to develop the thesis into an essay, or might do a Pair–Share activity to have students compare their thesis statements. At times, these thesis statements may be used in a timed write (a fifty minute in–class essay) that day, but often, the thesis drill is the culminating exercise of a lesson.

Timed Writes

On the AP English Literature exam, students are expected to write three essays in 120 minutes, which means that they should be able to write an effective and sophisticated essay in approximately forty minutes. In order to prepare my students to write under time constraints, I give them two or three in–class timed writes in each unit we complete. In the fall, I allow students up to sixty minutes to complete their timed writes, which usually take place in the second half of the class, after a discussion of thesis statements or immediately following a fishbowl discussion. I do this so that my students have had the chance to formulate their ideas in conversation with others. As the year progresses, I take off the training wheels, as it were, and ask students to write under pressure with less and less discussion and support. By the end of the year, they are given a poem or excerpt from a novel and asked to write on command for forty minutes, with no discussion.

Classroom Activities

Lesson 1: introducing the poetry unit.

On the first day of this poetry unit, I plan to start by projecting Seamus Heaney's "Sonnet 5", from Clearances , on the board. This poem, a variation on a sonnet, centers on two people in the act of folding laundry from an outdoor laundry line. After reading the poem aloud, I will ask for two students to get up and silently act out what has taken place in the poem. The class will analyze how well they performed the actions of the poem. This will be followed by a discussion of how we, as readers, can take a poem and act it out. What clues are we given? Some discussion questions might include:

What words resonate with you or seem rich with meaning?
Do you recognize any literary devices? How do they add to the meaning of the poem? (students will likely mention onomatopoeia and perhaps syntax, imagery, and diction)
Who is speaking in the poem? Is there anyone else in the poem?
What is Heaney trying to say?

After this brief discussion, we will discuss the idea that reading poetry is like solving a puzzle. You need to look for many types of clues to fully understand it. For instance, the clues we just uncovered in "Sonnet 5" dealt with form, literary devices, speaker and theme. In other instances, we might look to rhyme, meter, historical context, or even other poems by the same author, to develop assertions about the poem. In order to keep track of these clues, we must annotate the poem. This would be the next step in this lesson.

Throughout the unit, I will expect my students to annotate any poem they receive from me, so this introductory exercise is crucial. I will pass out a handout with instructions and an example for how to annotate (See Appendix 3). We will then follow the instructions on the handout to begin to annotate "Sonnet 5." After we have completed a line or two together as a class, I will ask students to pair up and finish their annotations, and then we will share out the clues that students discovered through the annotation exercise.

I will finish the day by providing three handouts: a copy of Shakespeare's "Sonnet 18", along with an article on how to read Shakespeare's writing, and a copy of a cartoon version of the same poem, taken from Poetry Comics by David Morice. Their assignment will be to read the article on understanding Shakespeare, then read and annotate the sonnet, and finally read the comic version of the poem. My hope is that they will not only begin to understand Shakespeare's language and themes, but will see that poetry can be playful as well.

Lesson 2: Ecphrastic Poetry

Once we have spent approximately one week studying love sonnets, my goal is to complicate my students' understanding of love. Traditional love, according to many of my students, could be defined by the Cinderella story—a man comes in and whisks a woman out of a difficult situation, and they live happily ever after. However, this is not reality. Thus, I want to read "Not My Best Side" by UA Fanthorpe, in order to discriminate reality from "Disney" romance.

The day will begin with a write–pair–share activity. On the board, I will write the following questions: What lessons do Disney movies typically teach us about love? According to these movies, what is the role of women in courtship, love and marriage? What about men? Finally, pick a Disney movie and discuss it—what lessons are being taught about love? After students have had roughly five to ten minutes to write, they will pair up with someone sitting near them and converse about their thoughts on these questions. We will then have a class conversation about these ideas.

We will transition from this discussion into "Not My Best Side." Fanthorpe's poem is structured in three parts. The first is from the point of view of a dragon, the second from a typically fairy tale princess, and the third from the knight in shining armor. I will split my students into three groups, and give each group one section of the poem. It will be their task to read their section, and then discuss who the speaker is and what the main concerns of this speaker are. I will ask each group to have a recorder, who takes notes on their discussion, and a reporter, who will share out their findings. After a brief discussion, we will reconvene as a whole class. I will ask one member of each group to read their section to the whole class, and discuss who their speaker is. As a class, we will establish who the three voices are in the poem, and how their priorities differ. I will then ask for a volunteer to sketch the poem on the board in the form of a cartoon. What might a visual image of this poem look like? Other students may chime in with ideas for the artist. Once the visual has been completed, I will display Paolo Uccello's painting, "St. George and the Dragon" on my whiteboard.

We will review the term ecphrasis , having discussed it earlier in the unit, and I will ask my students to discuss Uccello's painting in comparison to Fanthorpe's poem. How are they similar? What are their differences, specifically regarding theme?

Subsequently, I will move students into their poetry groups, and ask them to complete two exercises. First, they will do SOAPSTone on this poem, annotating the poem on a handout that I will provide. Second, in framing the theme of the poem, I want them to discuss the following quote, from Hilary Crew in her article "Spinning New Tales from Traditional Texts": Feminists…have written of the importance of issues of giving voice, agency, and subjectivity to those who have been previously silenced and objectified." My hope is that students will dig beneath the surface humor of the poem to see the underlying feminist message.

The final piece of this lesson will be homework that the students will be expected to complete. I will give them a slip of paper with the following two essay prompts:

Read carefully the poem by U.A. Fanthorpe. Then write an essay analyzing how Fanthorpe employs dramatic voice to add meaning to the poem.
Write a well–organized essay in which you analyze the techniques the poet uses to convey her attitude towards traditional notions of love in fairy tales.

Their job will be to pick one of the prompts, write a thesis statement and brainstorm ways that they would develop that thesis statement. We will discuss their ideas when we meet in the next session.

Lesson 3: Analyzing Elegies

This final lesson will take place during the elegy portion of my unit. Prior to entering class for this lesson, students will have read "Death" by William Carlos Williams and "A Curse Against Elegies" by Anne Sexton, both of which are ruminations on death and rail against death, and even against elegies in general. For homework, they will annotate these poems, specifically looking for thematic clues regarding death.

To start the day, I will review the terms euphony and cacophony with my students. When words sound harmonious and create a soothing effect, it's known as euphony. Alternately, when words sound harsh or discordant, they are thought to be cacophonous. I will ask my students to identify which letters/sounds seem euphonic to them, and which sound cacophonic. Since "Death" and "A Curse Against Elegies" both have many cacophonous sounds, I wanted to raise their awareness of these terms so they can use them in their discussions.

For the next twenty minutes, I will ask my students to get into their poetry groups. In their groups, they will go over one of the poems they were given for homework (I will determine which groups will discuss which poems). During their discussion, their primary goal is to complete SOAPSTone, as well as identify literary devices found within their poem. When the twenty minutes are up, we will rearrange the room to get into the fishbowl configuration. The students who analyzed "A Curse Against Elegies" will join the middle circle. For the next twenty–five minutes, it will be their job to discuss the deeper truths of the poem. On the board, I would put these guiding questions:

What aspects of SOAPSTone stand out, and how do those aspects help you understand the deeper meaning of the poem?
How does the form (elegy, use of stanzas, etc) impact the meaning of the poem?
What is the overall theme of the poem, and how does it reflect the themes we've discussed regarding grief?
How do the literary devices help to further develop this theme?

These are the questions that will guide the fishbowl discussion. When twenty–five minutes have passed, the groups will switch, and the second set of students will use the same guiding questions to discuss "Death."

To conclude this lesson, I will ask my students to complete an exit ticket, in which they write a thesis statement based on this essay prompt: Choose one of the poems we just discussed. Write an essay in which you describe the speaker's attitude toward death. Using specific references to the text, show how the use of language reveals the speaker's attitude.

Annotated Bibliography

Burt, Stephen, and David Mikics. The Art of the Sonnet . Cambridge: Belknap Press Of Harvard University Press, 2010. Excellent resource regarding the history of the sonnet, with many examples included.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed . New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000. This is a groundbreaking book, based on Freire's experiences with helping adult Brazilians achieve literacy. The book is a wonderful introduction to anti–oppressionist education, with an emphasis on dialogue and mutual respect.

Hollander, John. The Gazer's Spirit: Poems Speaking to Silent Works of Art. 1 ed. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1995. Hollander's book offers an expanded look at ecphrastic poetry.

Kennedy, David. ELEGY (The New Critical Idiom) . 1 ed. New York: Routledge, 2007. Part of the New Critical Idiom series, this book speaks of the origins of elegies, and also provides close reading and analysis of elegies.

Livingstone, Dinah. Poetry Handbook : For Readers and Writers. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993. This is a good resource for teaching meter, rhythm, and poetic form.

Morice, Dave. Poetry Comics . T&W Books, 2002. I will use this book to show my students a comic version of "Sonnet 18". It also features comic versions of "The Raven", "Some Trees" and many more.

Oliver, Mary. A Poetry Handbook . 1 ed. New York: Harvest Books, 1994. This slim volume extols the value of studying poetry as a means towards writing poetry.

The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics . 3 ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993. This encyclopedia offers rich explanations of poetic terms, genres, and movements.

California English Language Arts Standards met by this unit

Analyze the way in which clarity of meaning is affected by the patterns of organization, hierarchical structures, repetition of the main ideas, syntax, and word choice in the text.
Analyze characteristics of subgenres (e.g., satire, parody, allegory, pastoral) that are used in poetry, prose, plays, novels, short stories, essays, and other basic genres.
Analyze the way in which the theme or meaning of a selection represents a view or comment on life, using textual evidence to support the claim.
Analyze the ways in which irony, tone, mood, the author's style, and the "sound" of language achieve specific rhetorical or aesthetic purposes or both.
Analyze ways in which poets use imagery, personification, figures of speech, and sounds to evoke readers' emotions.
Analyze recognized works of world literature from a variety of authors.
Structure ideas and arguments in a sustained, persuasive, and sophisticated way and support them with precise and relevant examples.
Enhance meaning by employing rhetorical devices, including the extended use of parallelism, repetition, and analogy;
Use language in natural, fresh, and vivid ways to establish a specific tone.

College Board Course Description for AP English Literature

Writing: Writing instruction includes attention to developing and organizing ideas in clear, coherent and persuasive language. It includes study of the elements of style. And it attends to matters of precision and correctness as necessary.

Throughout the course, emphasis is placed on helping students develop stylistic maturity, which, for AP English, is characterized by the following:

a wide–ranging vocabulary used with denotative accuracy and connotative resourcefulness;
a variety of sentence structures, including appropriate use of subordinate and coordinate constructions;
a logical organization, enhanced by specific techniques of coherence such as repetition, transitions and emphasis.

Fishbowl Rubric

Scoring is somewhat dependent on the quality of comments, but as a general practice, I score on the following scale:

Comments more than 10 times, including several references to text, as well as analytical comments: A–A+

Comments more than 10 times, but lacks analysis or textual references: B+

Comments 7–10 times: B–/B

Comments 4–6 times: C/C+

Comments fewer than 4 times: C– or lower, depending on quality of comments

Annotating a Poem

Annotation means to mark critically. When reading poetry, it is crucial to mark the poem, noting all kinds of details that will help you understand the poem better. In other words, it is using the method of close reading to further your understanding of poetry. Annotation can provide you with wonderful ideas to offer in small groups and whole class discussions.

What to annotate:

Literary devices—note them and then try to figure out why they are used
Form—look carefully at rhyme and meter. This may help you uncover the mood or tone, or establish that this is a particular type of poem, such as a sonnet. You can number the lines or mark the rhyme scheme using alphabetical notations.
Binaries—these are ideas that are in opposition to each other, such as light/dark. Think about why the poet might create these binaries in the poem.
Speaker—look for clues about who is speaking. What point of view is the poem written in? What do you learn about the speaker? Remember—the speaker is not the poet, in most cases!
Word choice—do you notice use of dialect? Jargon? Big vocabulary words? Mark these words if they stand out to you.

How to annotate:

Use your instincts. You can circle or star words that stand out, or underline key phrases. Be sure to make lots of comments in the margins. Please use our annotation of "Sonnet 5" by Seamus Heaney as an example as you go forward in this unit.

Resources for Teachers

Modern American Poetry http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/

This online journal and online companion to the Anthology of Modern American Poetry is valuable to teachers and students alike. The site offers analysis and commentary on a wide range of poems, mostly from the 20 th and 21 st centuries.

Poetry Foundation http://www.poetryfoundation.org

This website is another wonderful location for finding and understanding poetry. I particularly like their "Poetry Tool", where you can search for poems by title, author, occasion, glossary term, or most popular. Also, the "Learning Lab" offers annotations and analysis of many poems.

Poets.org http://www.poets.org

Created and maintained by the Academy of American Poets, this website is my first stop when looking for online versions of poems dating back to Shakespeare. The Academy also offers poetry writing contests for high school students.

Read Write Think http://www.readwritethink.org

Maintained by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), this website has a wealth of lesson plans on many subjects, including poetry.

Sonnet Central http://www.sonnets.org/

This website is also very helpful to all teachers and students studying the sonnet. Almost all of the sonnets referred to in this curriculum unit can be found at this website.

Resources for Students

Poetry reading list.

"Sonnet 18" Shakespeare

"Sonnet 130" Shakespeare

"Sonnet 138" Shakespeare

"How do I Love Thee" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"A Superscription" by Dante Gabriel Rossetti*

"Paradise Saved (Another Version of the Fall)" by AD Hope*

"One Art" by Elizabeth Bishop

"Sonnet 5" by Seamus Heaney

"Not My Best Side" UA Fanthorpe*

"Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter" by John Crowe Ransom

"Death" by William Carlos Williams

"A Curse Against Elegies" by Anne Sexton

"Nightfishing" by Gjertrud Schnackenberg*

"Ivan Generalic" by Gjertrud Schnackenberg*

(Ecphrastic poems are noted with an asterisk. Most images that pair with these poems can be found online using a simple Google search)

Rutledge, John . "Saper Vedere." Rutledge Capital . 25 Mar. 2008. rutledgecapital.com/2008/03/25/saper–vedere/ >. (accessed 5 June 2010).
Samuel, Deborah. "Detecting Shakespeare's Sonnets." Yale National Initiative . teachers.yale.edu/curriculum/search/viewer.php?skin=h&id=initiative_08.01.10_u >. (accessed 5 July 2010).
Benton, Peter. "Unweaving the Rainbow: Poetry Teaching in the Secondary School ." Oxford Review of Education 25 .4 (1999): 521–531.
Oliver, Mary. A Poetry Handbook . Harcourt Brace and Company: San Diego 1994.
Livingstone, 68.
Mayes, Frances. The Discovery of Poetry: A Field Guide to Reading and Writing Poems. New York: Harvest Books, 2001. 302.
The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics , 322.
"Language Acquisition." Earth Renewal. 8 July 2010. earthrenewal.org/secondlang.htm>.
Burt and Mikics. 8
The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics , 1168.
Burt and Mikics, 18.
Burt and Mikics 199
Burt and Mikics 201
Burt and Mikics, 200
Kennedy, 11.
The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics , 324.
"On "Bells for John Whiteside's Daughter"." Modern American Poetry . University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/m_r/ransom/bells.htm >. (accessed 10 July 2010).
Ramazani, Jahan. Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney . 1 ed. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1994. 1.
Hollander, 4.
Smith, M.K.. "Paulo Freire and informal education." Informal Education . 4 Nov. 2009. Web. http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et–freir.htm>. (accessed 7 July 2010).
"Constructivism as a Paradigm for Teaching and Learning." THIRTEEN . http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/constructivism/index_sub3.html>. (accessed 10 July 2010).

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Essay on Love for Students and Children

500+ words essay on love.

Love is the most significant thing in human’s life. Each science and every single literature masterwork will tell you about it. Humans are also social animals. We lived for centuries with this way of life, we were depended on one another to tell us how our clothes fit us, how our body is whether healthy or emaciated. All these we get the honest opinions of those who love us, those who care for us and makes our happiness paramount.

What is Love?

Love is a set of emotions, behaviors, and beliefs with strong feelings of affection. So, for example, a person might say he or she loves his or her dog, loves freedom, or loves God. The concept of love may become an unimaginable thing and also it may happen to each person in a particular way.

Love has a variety of feelings, emotions, and attitude. For someone love is more than just being interested physically in another one, rather it is an emotional attachment. We can say love is more of a feeling that a person feels for another person. Therefore, the basic meaning of love is to feel more than liking towards someone.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Need of Love

We know that the desire to love and care for others is a hard-wired and deep-hearted because the fulfillment of this wish increases the happiness level. Expressing love for others benefits not just the recipient of affection, but also the person who delivers it. The need to be loved can be considered as one of our most basic and fundamental needs.

One of the forms that this need can take is contact comfort. It is the desire to be held and touched. So there are many experiments showing that babies who are not having contact comfort, especially during the first six months, grow up to be psychologically damaged.

Significance of Love

Love is as critical for the mind and body of a human being as oxygen. Therefore, the more connected you are, the healthier you will be physically as well as emotionally. It is also true that the less love you have, the level of depression will be more in your life. So, we can say that love is probably the best antidepressant.

It is also a fact that the most depressed people don’t love themselves and they do not feel loved by others. They also become self-focused and hence making themselves less attractive to others.

Society and Love

It is a scientific fact that society functions better when there is a certain sense of community. Compassion and love are the glue for society. Hence without it, there is no feeling of togetherness for further evolution and progress. Love , compassion, trust and caring we can say that these are the building blocks of relationships and society.

Relationship and Love

A relationship is comprised of many things such as friendship , sexual attraction , intellectual compatibility, and finally love. Love is the binding element that keeps a relationship strong and solid. But how do you know if you are in love in true sense? Here are some symptoms that the emotion you are feeling is healthy, life-enhancing love.

Love is the Greatest Wealth in Life

Love is the greatest wealth in life because we buy things we love for our happiness. For example, we build our dream house and purchase a favorite car to attract love. Being loved in a remote environment is a better experience than been hated even in the most advanced environment.

Love or Money

Love should be given more importance than money as love is always everlasting. Money is important to live, but having a true companion you can always trust should come before that. If you love each other, you will both work hard to help each other live an amazing life together.

Love has been a vital reason we do most things in our life. Before we could know ourselves, we got showered by it from our close relatives like mothers , fathers , siblings, etc. Thus love is a unique gift for shaping us and our life. Therefore, we can say that love is a basic need of life. It plays a vital role in our life, society, and relation. It gives us energy and motivation in a difficult time. Finally, we can say that it is greater than any other thing in life.

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25 Thesis Statement Examples

thesis statement examples and definition, explained below

A thesis statement is needed in an essay or dissertation . There are multiple types of thesis statements – but generally we can divide them into expository and argumentative. An expository statement is a statement of fact (common in expository essays and process essays) while an argumentative statement is a statement of opinion (common in argumentative essays and dissertations). Below are examples of each.

Strong Thesis Statement Examples

school uniforms and dress codes, explained below

1. School Uniforms

“Mandatory school uniforms should be implemented in educational institutions as they promote a sense of equality, reduce distractions, and foster a focused and professional learning environment.”

Best For: Argumentative Essay or Debate

Read More: School Uniforms Pros and Cons

nature vs nurture examples and definition

2. Nature vs Nurture

“This essay will explore how both genetic inheritance and environmental factors equally contribute to shaping human behavior and personality.”

Best For: Compare and Contrast Essay

3. American Dream

“The American Dream, a symbol of opportunity and success, is increasingly elusive in today’s socio-economic landscape, revealing deeper inequalities in society.”

Best For: Persuasive Essay

4. Social Media

“Social media has revolutionized communication and societal interactions, but it also presents significant challenges related to privacy, mental health, and misinformation.”

Best For: Expository Essay

Read More: The Pros and Cons of Social Media

5. Globalization

“Globalization has created a world more interconnected than ever before, yet it also amplifies economic disparities and cultural homogenization.”

6. Urbanization

“Urbanization drives economic growth and social development, but it also poses unique challenges in sustainability and quality of life.”

7. Immigration

“Immigration enriches receiving countries culturally and economically, outweighing any perceived social or economic burdens.”

8. Cultural Identity

“In a globalized world, maintaining distinct cultural identities is crucial for preserving cultural diversity and fostering global understanding, despite the challenges of assimilation and homogenization.”

Best For: Argumentative Essay

Read More: Learn about Cultural Identity

technology examples and definition explained below

9. Technology

“Medical technologies in care institutions in Toronto has increased subjcetive outcomes for patients with chronic pain.”

Best For: Research Paper

10. Capitalism vs Socialism

“The debate between capitalism and socialism centers on balancing economic freedom and inequality, each presenting distinct approaches to resource distribution and social welfare.”

cultural heritage examples and definition

11. Cultural Heritage

“The preservation of cultural heritage is essential, not only for cultural identity but also for educating future generations, outweighing the arguments for modernization and commercialization.”

pseudoscience examples and definition, explained below

12. Pseudoscience

“Pseudoscience, characterized by a lack of empirical support, continues to influence public perception and decision-making, often at the expense of scientific credibility.”

13. Free Will

“The concept of free will is largely an illusion, with human behavior and decisions predominantly determined by biological and environmental factors.”

14. Gender Roles

“Traditional gender roles are outdated and harmful, restricting individual freedoms and perpetuating gender inequalities in modern society.”

Read More: What are Traditional Gender Roles?

work-life balance examples and definition, explained below

15. Work-Life Ballance

“The trend to online and distance work in the 2020s led to improved subjective feelings of work-life balance but simultaneously increased self-reported loneliness.”

16. Universal Healthcare

“Universal healthcare is a fundamental human right and the most effective system for ensuring health equity and societal well-being, outweighing concerns about government involvement and costs.”

Read More: The Pros and Cons of Universal Healthcare

17. Minimum Wage

“The implementation of a fair minimum wage is vital for reducing economic inequality, yet it is often contentious due to its potential impact on businesses and employment rates.”

Read More: The Pros and Cons of Raising the Minimum Wage

18. Homework

“The homework provided throughout this semester has enabled me to achieve greater self-reflection, identify gaps in my knowledge, and reinforce those gaps through spaced repetition.”

Best For: Reflective Essay

Read More: Reasons Homework Should be Banned

charter schools vs public schools, explained below

19. Charter Schools

“Charter schools offer alternatives to traditional public education, promising innovation and choice but also raising questions about accountability and educational equity.”

Read More: The Pros and Cons of Charter Schools

20. Effects of the Internet

“The Internet has drastically reshaped human communication, access to information, and societal dynamics, generally with a net positive effect on society.”

Read More: The Pros and Cons of the Internet

affirmative action example and definition, explained below

21. Affirmative Action

“Affirmative action is essential for rectifying historical injustices and achieving true meritocracy in education and employment, contrary to claims of reverse discrimination.”

Best For: Essay

Read More: Affirmative Action Pros and Cons

soft skills examples and definition, explained below

22. Soft Skills

“Soft skills, such as communication and empathy, are increasingly recognized as essential for success in the modern workforce, and therefore should be a strong focus at school and university level.”

23. Moral Panic

“Moral panic, often fueled by media and cultural anxieties, can lead to exaggerated societal responses that sometimes overlook rational analysis and evidence.”

24. Freedom of the Press

“Freedom of the press is critical for democracy and informed citizenship, yet it faces challenges from censorship, media bias, and the proliferation of misinformation.”

Read More: Freedom of the Press Examples

25. Mass Media

“Mass media shapes public opinion and cultural norms, but its concentration of ownership and commercial interests raise concerns about bias and the quality of information.”

Best For: Critical Analysis

Checklist: How to use your Thesis Statement

✅ Position: If your statement is for an argumentative or persuasive essay, or a dissertation, ensure it takes a clear stance on the topic. ✅ Specificity: It addresses a specific aspect of the topic, providing focus for the essay. ✅ Conciseness: Typically, a thesis statement is one to two sentences long. It should be concise, clear, and easily identifiable. ✅ Direction: The thesis statement guides the direction of the essay, providing a roadmap for the argument, narrative, or explanation. ✅ Evidence-based: While the thesis statement itself doesn’t include evidence, it sets up an argument that can be supported with evidence in the body of the essay. ✅ Placement: Generally, the thesis statement is placed at the end of the introduction of an essay.

Try These AI Prompts – Thesis Statement Generator!

One way to brainstorm thesis statements is to get AI to brainstorm some for you! Try this AI prompt:

💡 AI PROMPT FOR EXPOSITORY THESIS STATEMENT I am writing an essay on [TOPIC] and these are the instructions my teacher gave me: [INSTUCTIONS]. I want you to create an expository thesis statement that doesn’t argue a position, but demonstrates depth of knowledge about the topic.

💡 AI PROMPT FOR ARGUMENTATIVE THESIS STATEMENT I am writing an essay on [TOPIC] and these are the instructions my teacher gave me: [INSTRUCTIONS]. I want you to create an argumentative thesis statement that clearly takes a position on this issue.

💡 AI PROMPT FOR COMPARE AND CONTRAST THESIS STATEMENT I am writing a compare and contrast essay that compares [Concept 1] and [Concept2]. Give me 5 potential single-sentence thesis statements that remain objective.

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 5 Top Tips for Succeeding at University
Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 50 Durable Goods Examples
Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 100 Consumer Goods Examples
Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 30 Globalization Pros and Cons

New Philosophical Essays on Love and Loving

© 2021
Simon Cushing 0

University of Michigan–Flint, Flint, USA

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New philosophical essays on love by a diverse group of international scholars

Includes contributions to the ongoing debate on whether love is arational or if there are reasons for love

Also whether love can explain the difference between nationalism and patriotism

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3 Citations

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Table of contents (14 chapters)

Front matter, introduction.

Simon Cushing

Making Room for Love in Kantian Ethics

Ernesto V. Garcia

Iris Murdoch and the Epistemic Significance of Love

Cathy Mason

‘Love’ as a Practice: Looking at Real People

Lotte Spreeuwenberg

Love, Choice, and Taking Responsibility

Christopher Cowley

Not All’s Fair in Love and War: Toward Just Love Theory

Andrew Sneddon

Doubting Love

Larry A. Herzberg

Love and Free Agency

Ishtiyaque Haji

Sentimental Reasons

Edgar Phillips

Wouldn’t It Be Nice: Enticing Reasons for Love

N. L. Engel-Hawbecker

Love, Motivation, and Reasons: The Case of the Drowning Wife

Monica Roland

Can Our Beloved Pets Love Us Back?

Ryan Stringer

Romantic Love Between Humans and AIs: A Feminist Ethical Critique

Andrea Klonschinski, Michael Kühler

Patriotism and Nationalism as Two Distinct Ways of Loving One’s Country

Maria Ioannou, Martijn Boot, Ryan Wittingslow, Adriana Mattos

Back Matter

Rationality
Artificial Intelligence
Iris Murdoch
Non-Human Animals

About this book

Editors and affiliations, about the editor, bibliographic information.

Book Title : New Philosophical Essays on Love and Loving

Editors : Simon Cushing

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72324-8

Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan Cham

eBook Packages : Religion and Philosophy , Philosophy and Religion (R0)

Copyright Information : The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

Hardcover ISBN : 978-3-030-72323-1 Published: 21 September 2021

Softcover ISBN : 978-3-030-72326-2 Published: 22 September 2022

eBook ISBN : 978-3-030-72324-8 Published: 20 September 2021

Edition Number : 1

Number of Pages : XII, 322

Topics : Philosophy of Mind , Ethics , Social Philosophy , Emotion

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Knowledge Base
Dissertation
What Is a Thesis? | Ultimate Guide & Examples

What Is a Thesis? | Ultimate Guide & Examples

Published on September 14, 2022 by Tegan George . Revised on November 21, 2023.

A thesis is a type of research paper based on your original research. It is usually submitted as the final step of a master’s program or a capstone to a bachelor’s degree.

Writing a thesis can be a daunting experience. Other than a dissertation , it is one of the longest pieces of writing students typically complete. It relies on your ability to conduct research from start to finish: choosing a relevant topic , crafting a proposal , designing your research , collecting data , developing a robust analysis, drawing strong conclusions , and writing concisely .

Thesis template

You can also download our full thesis template in the format of your choice below. Our template includes a ready-made table of contents , as well as guidance for what each chapter should include. It’s easy to make it your own, and can help you get started.

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Thesis vs. thesis statement, how to structure a thesis, acknowledgements or preface, list of figures and tables, list of abbreviations, introduction, literature review, methodology, reference list, proofreading and editing, defending your thesis, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about theses.

You may have heard the word thesis as a standalone term or as a component of academic writing called a thesis statement . Keep in mind that these are two very different things.

A thesis statement is a very common component of an essay, particularly in the humanities. It usually comprises 1 or 2 sentences in the introduction of your essay , and should clearly and concisely summarize the central points of your academic essay .
A thesis is a long-form piece of academic writing, often taking more than a full semester to complete. It is generally a degree requirement for Master’s programs, and is also sometimes required to complete a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts colleges.
In the US, a dissertation is generally written as a final step toward obtaining a PhD.
In other countries (particularly the UK), a dissertation is generally written at the bachelor’s or master’s level.

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The final structure of your thesis depends on a variety of components, such as:

Your discipline
Your theoretical approach

Humanities theses are often structured more like a longer-form essay . Just like in an essay, you build an argument to support a central thesis.

In both hard and social sciences, theses typically include an introduction , literature review , methodology section , results section , discussion section , and conclusion section . These are each presented in their own dedicated section or chapter. In some cases, you might want to add an appendix .

Thesis examples

We’ve compiled a short list of thesis examples to help you get started.

Example thesis #1: “Abolition, Africans, and Abstraction: the Influence of the ‘Noble Savage’ on British and French Antislavery Thought, 1787-1807” by Suchait Kahlon.
Example thesis #2: “’A Starving Man Helping Another Starving Man’: UNRRA, India, and the Genesis of Global Relief, 1943-1947″ by Julian Saint Reiman.

The very first page of your thesis contains all necessary identifying information, including:

Your full title
Your full name
Your department
Your institution and degree program
Your submission date.

Sometimes the title page also includes your student ID, the name of your supervisor, or the university’s logo. Check out your university’s guidelines if you’re not sure.

Theoretical framework

Your literature review can often form the basis for your theoretical framework, but these are not the same thing. A theoretical framework defines and analyzes the concepts and theories that your research hinges on.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

George, T. (2023, November 21). What Is a Thesis? | Ultimate Guide & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved April 15, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/thesis/

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, best analysis: love and relationships in the great gatsby.

Book Guides

Love, desire, and sex are a major motivators for nearly every character in The Great Gatsby . However, none of Gatsby's five major relationships is depicted as healthy or stable.

So what can we make of this? Is Fitzgerald arguing that love itself is unstable, or is it just that experiencing love and desire the way the characters do is problematic?

Gatsby's portrayal of love and desire is complex. So we will explore and analyze each of Gatsby's five major relationships: Daisy/Tom, George/Myrtle, Gatsby/Daisy, Tom/Myrtle, and Jordan/Nick. We will also note how each relationship develops through the story, the power dynamics involved, and what each particular relationship seems to say about Fitzgerald's depiction of love.

We will also include analysis of important quotes for each of the five major couples. Finally, we will go over some common essay questions about love, desire, and relationships to help you with class assignments.

Keep reading for the ultimate guide to love in the time of Gatsby!

George/Myrtle
Daisy/Gatsby
Nick/Jordan
Common Essay Prompts/Discussion Topics

Quick Note on Our Citations

Our citation format in this guide is (chapter.paragraph). We're using this system since there are many editions of Gatsby, so using page numbers would only work for students with our copy of the book. To find a quotation we cite via chapter and paragraph in your book, you can either eyeball it (Paragraph 1-50: beginning of chapter; 50-100: middle of chapter; 100-on: end of chapter), or use the search function if you're using an online or eReader version of the text.

Analyzing The Great Gatsby Relationships

We will discuss the romantic pairings in the novel first through the lens of marriage. Then we will turn our attention to relationships that occur outside of marriage.

Marriage 1: Daisy and Tom Buchanan

Tom and Daisy Buchanan were married in 1919, three years before the start of the novel. They both come from incredibly wealthy families, and live on fashionable East Egg, marking them as members of the "old money" class.

Daisy and Tom Marriage Description

As Jordan relates in a flashback, Daisy almost changed her mind about marrying Tom after receiving a letter from Gatsby (an earlier relationship of hers, discussed below), but eventually went through with the ceremony "without so much as a shiver" (4.142).

Daisy appeared quite in love when they first got married, but the realities of the marriage, including Tom's multiple affairs, have worn on her. Tom even cheated on her soon after their honeymoon, according to Jordan: "It was touching to see them together—it made you laugh in a hushed, fascinated way. That was in August. A week after I left Santa Barbara Tom ran into a wagon on the Ventura road one night and ripped a front wheel off his car. The girl who was with him got into the papers too because her arm was broken—she was one of the chambermaids in the Santa Barbara Hotel" (1.143).

So what makes the Buchanans tick? Why has their marriage survived multiple affairs and even a hit-and-run? Find out through our analysis of key quotes from the novel.

Daisy and Tom Marriage Quotes

Why they came east I don't know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. (1.17)

Nick introduces Tom and Daisy as restless, rich, and as a singular unit: they. Despite all of the revelations about the affairs and other unhappiness in their marriage, and the events of the novel, it's important to note our first and last descriptions of Tom and Daisy describe them as a close, if bored, couple . In fact, Nick only doubles down on this observation later in Chapter 1.

Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

"You see I think everything's terrible anyhow," she went on in a convinced way. "Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything." Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom's, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. "Sophisticated—God, I'm sophisticated!"

"The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged." (1.118-120)

In this passage, Daisy pulls Nick aside in Chapter 1 and claims, despite her outward happiness and luxurious lifestyle, she's quite depressed by her current situation. At first, it seems Daisy is revealing the cracks in her marriage —Tom was "God knows where" at the birth of their daughter, Pammy—as well as a general malaise about society in general ("everything's terrible anyhow").

However, right after this confession, Nick doubts her sincerity. And indeed, she follows up her apparently serious complaint with "an absolute smirk." What's going on here?

Well, Nick goes on to observe that the smirk "asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged." In other words, despite Daisy's performance, she seems content to remain with Tom, part of the "secret society" of the ultra-rich.

So the question is: can anyone—or anything—lift Daisy out of her complacency?

"I never loved him," she said, with perceptible reluctance.

"Not at Kapiolani?" demanded Tom suddenly.

From the ballroom beneath, muffled and suffocating chords were drifting up on hot waves of air.

"Not that day I carried you down from the Punch Bowl to keep your shoes dry?" There was a husky tenderness in his tone. ". . . Daisy?" (7.258-62)

Over the course of the novel, both Tom and Daisy enter or continue affairs, pulling away from each other instead of confronting the problems in their marriage.

However, Gatsby forces them to confront their feelings in the Plaza Hotel when he demands Daisy say she never loved Tom. Although she gets the words out, she immediately rescinds them—"I did love [Tom] once but I loved you too!"—after Tom questions her.

Here, Tom—usually presented as a swaggering, brutish, and unkind—breaks down, speaking with "husky tenderness" and recalling some of the few happy moments in his and Daisy's marriage. This is a key moment because it shows despite the dysfunction of their marriage, Tom and Daisy seem to both seek solace in happy early memories. Between those few happy memories and the fact that they both come from the same social class, their marriage ends up weathering multiple affairs.

Daisy and Tom were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table with a plate of cold fried chicken between them and two bottles of ale. He was talking intently across the table at her and in his earnestness his hand had fallen upon and covered her own. Once in a while she looked up at him and nodded in agreement.

They weren't happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale—and yet they weren't unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together. (7.409-10)

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made. . . . (9.146)

By the end of the novel, after Daisy's murder of Myrtle as well as Gatsby's death, she and Tom are firmly back together, "conspiring" and "careless" once again, despite the deaths of their lovers.

As Nick notes, they "weren't happy…and yet they weren't unhappy either." Their marriage is important to both of them, since it reassures their status as old money aristocracy and brings stability to their lives. So the novel ends with them once again described as a unit, a "they," perhaps even more strongly bonded since they've survived not only another round of affairs but murder, as well.

Daisy and Tom Marriage Analysis

Neither Myrtle's infatuation with Tom or Gatsby's deep longing for Daisy can drive a wedge between the couple. Despite the lying, cheating, and murdering that occurs during the summer, Tom and Daisy end the novel just like they began it: careless, restless, and yet, firmly united.

The stubborn closeness of Tom and Daisy's marriage, despite Daisy's exaggerated unhappiness and Tom's philandering, reinforces the dominance of the old money class over the world of Gatsby. Despite so many troubles, for Tom and Daisy, their marriage guarantees their continued membership in the exclusive world of the old money rich. In other words, class is a much stronger bond than love in the novel.

Marriage 2: Myrtle and George Wilson

In contrast to Tom and Daisy, Myrtle and George were married 12 years before the start of the novel. You might think that since they've been married for four times as long, their marriage is more stable. In fact, in contrast from Tom and Daisy's unified front, Myrtle and George's marriage appears fractured from the beginning .

Myrtle and George Marriage Description

Although Myrtle was taken with George at first, she overestimated his money and "breeding" and found herself married to a mechanic and living over a garage in Queens, a situation she's apparently unhappy with (2.112).

However, divorce was uncommon in the 1920s, and furthermore, the working-class Myrtle doesn't have access to wealthy family members or any other real options, so she stays married—perhaps because George is quite devoted and even in some ways subservient to her.

A few months before the beginning of the novel in 1922, she begins an affair with Tom Buchanan, her first affair (2.117). She sees the affair as a way out of her marriage, but Tom sees her as just another disposable mistress, leaving her desperate and vulnerable once George finds out about the affair.

Myrtle and George Marriage Quotes

I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice:

"Get some chairs, why don't you, so somebody can sit down."

"Oh, sure," agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom. (2.15-17)

As we discuss in our article on the symbolic valley of ashes , George is coated by the dust of despair and thus seems mired in the hopelessness and depression of that bleak place, while Myrtle is alluring and full of vitality. Her first action is to order her husband to get chairs, and the second is to move away from him, closer to Tom.

In contrast to Tom and Daisy, who are initially presented as a unit, our first introduction to George and Myrtle shows them fractured, with vastly different personalities and motivations. We get the sense right away that their marriage is in trouble, and conflict between the two is imminent.

"I married him because I thought he was a gentleman," she said finally. "I thought he knew something about breeding, but he wasn't fit to lick my shoe."

"You were crazy about him for a while," said Catherine.

"Crazy about him!" cried Myrtle incredulously. "Who said I was crazy about him? I never was any more crazy about him than I was about that man there." (2.112-4)

Here we get a bit of back-story about George and Myrtle's marriage: like Daisy, Myrtle was crazy about her husband at first but the marriage has since soured. But while Daisy doesn't have any real desire to leave Tom, here we see Myrtle eager to leave, and very dismissive of her husband. Myrtle seems to suggest that even having her husband wait on her is unacceptable—it's clear she thinks she is finally headed for bigger and better things.

Generally he was one of these worn-out men: when he wasn't working he sat on a chair in the doorway and stared at the people and the cars that passed along the road. When any one spoke to him he invariably laughed in an agreeable, colorless way. He was his wife's man and not his own. (7.312)

Again, in contrast to the strangely unshakeable partnership of Tom and Daisy, the co-conspirators, Michaelis (briefly taking over narrator duties) observes that George "was his wife's man," "worn out." Obviously, this situation gets turned on its head when George locks Myrtle up when he discovers the affair, but Michaelis's observation speaks to instability in the Wilson's marriage, in which each fights for control over the other . Rather than face the world as a unified front, the Wilsons each struggle for dominance within the marriage.

"Beat me!" he heard her cry. "Throw me down and beat me, you dirty little coward!"

A moment later she rushed out into the dusk, waving her hands and shouting; before he could move from his door the business was over. (7.314-5)

We don't know what happened in the fight before this crucial moment, but we do know George locked Myrtle in a room once he figured out she was having an affair. So despite the outward appearance of being ruled by his wife, he does, in fact, have the ability to physically control her. However, he apparently doesn't hit her, the way Tom does, and Myrtle taunts him for it—perhaps insinuating he's less a man than Tom.

This outbreak of both physical violence (George locking up Myrtle) and emotional abuse (probably on both sides) fulfills the earlier sense of the marriage being headed for conflict. Still, it's disturbing to witness the last few minutes of this fractured, unstable partnership.

Myrtle and George Marriage Analysis

While Tom and Daisy's marriage ends up being oddly stable thanks to their money, despite multiple affairs, Myrtle and George's marriage goes from strained to violent after just one.

In other words, Tom and Daisy can patch things up over and over by retreating into their status and money, while Myrtle and George don't have that luxury . While George wants to retreat out west, he doesn't have the money, leaving him and Myrtle in Queens and vulnerable to the dangerous antics of the other characters. The instability of their marriage thus seems to come from the instability of their financial situation, as well as the fact that Myrtle is more ambitious than George.

Fitzgerald seems to be arguing that anyone who is not wealthy is much more vulnerable to tragedy and strife. As a song sung in Chapter 5 goes, "The rich get richer and the poor get—children"—the rich get richer and the poor can't escape their poverty, or tragedy (5.150). The contrasting marriages of the Buchanans and the Wilsons help illustrate the novel's critique of the wealthy, old-money class.

Relationship 1: Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby

The relationship at the very heart of The Great Gatsby is, of course, Gatsby and Daisy , or more specifically, Gatsby's tragic love of (or obsession with) Daisy, a love that drives the novel's plot. So how did this ill-fated love story begin?

Daisy and Gatsby Relationship Description

Five years before the start of the novel, Jay Gatsby (who had learned from Dan Cody how to act like one of the wealthy) was stationed in Louisville before going to fight in WWI. In Louisville, he met Daisy Fay, a beautiful young heiress (10 years his junior), who took him for someone of her social class. Gatsby maintained the lie, which allowed their relationship to progress.

Gatsby fell in love with Daisy and the wealth she represents, and she with him (though apparently not to the same excessive extent ), but he had to leave for the war and by the time he returned to the US in 1919, Daisy has married Tom Buchanan.

Determined to get her back, Gatsby falls in with Meyer Wolfshiem, a gangster, and gets into bootlegging and other criminal enterprises to make enough money to finally be able to provide for her. By the beginning of the novel, he is ready to try and win her back over, ignoring the fact she has been married to Tom for three years and has a child. So does this genius plan turn out the way Gatsby hopes? Can he repeat the past? Not exactly.

Daisy and Gatsby Relationship Quotes

"You must know Gatsby."

"Gatsby?" demanded Daisy. "What Gatsby?" (1.60-1)

In the first chapter, we get a few mentions and glimpses of Gatsby, but one of the most interesting is Daisy immediately perking up at his name. She obviously still remembers him and perhaps even thinks about him, but her surprise suggests that she thinks he's long gone, buried deep in her past.

This is in sharp contrast to the image we get of Gatsby himself at the end of the Chapter, reaching actively across the bay to Daisy's house (1.152). While Daisy views Gatsby as a memory, Daisy is Gatsby's past, present, and future. It's clear even in Chapter 1 that Gatsby's love for Daisy is much more intense than her love for him.

"Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay."

Then it had not been merely the stars to which he had aspired on that June night. He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendor. (4.151-2)

In Chapter 4, we learn Daisy and Gatsby's story from Jordan: specifically, how they dated in Louisville but it ended when Gatsby went to the front. She also explains how Daisy threatened to call off her marriage to Tom after receiving a letter from Gatsby, but of course ended up marrying him anyway (4.140).

Here we also learn that Gatsby's primary motivation is to get Daisy back, while Daisy is of course in the dark about all of this. This sets the stage for their affair being on unequal footing: while each has love and affection for the other, Gatsby has thought of little else but Daisy for five years while Daisy has created a whole other life for herself .

"We haven't met for many years," said Daisy, her voice as matter-of-fact as it could ever be.

"Five years next November." (5.69-70)

Daisy and Gatsby finally reunite in Chapter 5, the book's mid-point. The entire chapter is obviously important for understanding the Daisy/Gatsby relationship, since we actually see them interact for the first time. But this initial dialogue is fascinating, because we see that Daisy's memories of Gatsby are more abstract and clouded, while Gatsby has been so obsessed with her he knows the exact month they parted and has clearly been counting down the days until their reunion.

They were sitting at either end of the couch looking at each other as if some question had been asked or was in the air, and every vestige of embarrassment was gone. Daisy's face was smeared with tears and when I came in she jumped up and began wiping at it with her handkerchief before a mirror. But there was a change in Gatsby that was simply confounding. He literally glowed; without a word or a gesture of exultation a new well-being radiated from him and filled the little room. (5.87)

After the initially awkward re-introduction, Nick leaves Daisy and Gatsby alone and comes back to find them talking candidly and emotionally. Gatsby has transformed—he is radiant and glowing. In contrast, we don't see Daisy as radically transformed except for her tears. Although our narrator, Nick, pays much closer attention to Gatsby than Daisy, these different reactions suggest Gatsby is much more intensely invested in the relationship.

"They're such beautiful shirts," she sobbed, her voice muffled in the thick folds. "It makes me sad because I've never seen such—such beautiful shirts before." (5.118).

Gatsby gets the chance to show off his mansion and enormous wealthy to Daisy, and she breaks down after a very conspicuous display of Gatsby's wealth, through his many-colored shirts.

In Daisy's tears, you might sense a bit of guilt—that Gatsby attained so much just for her—or perhaps regret, that she might have been able to be with him had she had the strength to walk away from her marriage with Tom.

Still, unlike Gatsby, whose motivations are laid bare, it's hard to know what Daisy is thinking and how invested she is in their relationship, despite how openly emotional she is during this reunion. Perhaps she's just overcome with emotion due to reliving the emotions of their first encounters.

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy's white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips' touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete. (6.134)

In flashback, we hear about Daisy and Gatsby's first kiss, through Gatsby's point of view. We see explicitly in this scene that, for Gatsby, Daisy has come to represent all of his larger hopes and dreams about wealth and a better life—she is literally the incarnation of his dreams . There is no analogous passage on Daisy's behalf, because we actually don't know that much of Daisy's inner life, or certainly not much compared to Gatsby.

So we see, again, the relationship is very uneven—Gatsby has literally poured his heart and soul into it, while Daisy, though she obviously has love and affection for Gatsby, hasn't idolized him in the same way. It becomes clear here that Daisy—who is human and fallible—can never live up to Gatsby's huge projection of her .

"Oh, you want too much!" she cried to Gatsby. "I love you now—isn't that enough? I can't help what's past." She began to sob helplessly. "I did love him once—but I loved you too."

Gatsby's eyes opened and closed.

"You loved me too?" he repeated. (7.264-66)

Here we finally get a glimpse at Daisy's real feelings— she loved Gatsby, but also Tom, and to her those were equal loves . She hasn't put that initial love with Gatsby on a pedestal the way Gatsby has. Gatsby's obsession with her appears shockingly one-sided at this point, and it's clear to the reader she will not leave Tom for him. You can also see why this confession is such a blow to Gatsby: he's been dreaming about Daisy for years and sees her as his one true love, while she can't even rank her love for Gatsby above her love for Tom.

"Was Daisy driving?"

"Yes," he said after a moment, "but of course I'll say I was." (7.397-8)

Despite Daisy's rejection of Gatsby back at the Plaza Hotel, he refuses to believe that it was real and is sure that he can still get her back. His devotion is so intense he doesn't think twice about covering for her and taking the blame for Myrtle's death. In fact, his obsession is so strong he barely seems to register that there's been a death, or to feel any guilt at all. This moment further underscores how much Daisy means to Gatsby, and how comparatively little he means to her.

She was the first "nice" girl he had ever known. In various unrevealed capacities he had come in contact with such people but always with indiscernible barbed wire between. He found her excitingly desirable. He went to her house, at first with other officers from Camp Taylor, then alone. It amazed him—he had never been in such a beautiful house before. But what gave it an air of breathless intensity was that Daisy lived there—it was as casual a thing to her as his tent out at camp was to him. There was a ripe mystery about it, a hint of bedrooms upstairs more beautiful and cool than other bedrooms, of gay and radiant activities taking place through its corridors and of romances that were not musty and laid away already in lavender but fresh and breathing and redolent of this year's shining motor cars and of dances whose flowers were scarcely withered. It excited him too that many men had already loved Daisy—it increased her value in his eyes. He felt their presence all about the house, pervading the air with the shades and echoes of still vibrant emotions. (8.10, emphasis added)

In Chapter 8, when we get the rest of Gatsby's backstory, we learn more about what drew him to Daisy—her wealth, and specifically the world that opened up to Gatsby as he got to know her. Interestingly, we also learn that her "value increased" in Gatsby's eyes when it became clear that many other men had also loved her. We see then how Daisy got all tied up in Gatsby's ambitions for a better, wealthier life.

You also know, as a reader, that Daisy obviously is human and fallible and can never realistically live up to Gatsby's inflated images of her and what she represents to him. So in these last pages, before Gatsby's death as we learn the rest of Gatsby's story, we sense that his obsessive longing for Daisy was as much about his longing for another, better life, than it was about a single woman.

Gatsby and Daisy Relationship Analysis

Daisy and Gatsby's relationship is definitely lopsided. There is an uneven degree of love on both sides (Gatsby seems much more obsessively in love with Daisy than Daisy is with him). We also have difficulty deciphering both sides of the relationship, since we know far more about Gatsby, his past, and his internal life than about Daisy.

Because of this, it's hard to criticize Daisy for not choosing Gatsby over Tom—as an actual, flesh-and-blood person, she never could have fulfilled Gatsby's rose-tinted memory of her and all she represents. Furthermore, during her brief introduction into Gatsby's world in Chapter 6, she seemed pretty unhappy. "She was appalled by West Egg, this unprecedented "place" that Broadway had begotten upon a Long Island fishing village—appalled by its raw vigor that chafed under the old euphemisms and by the too obtrusive fate that herded its inhabitants along a short cut from nothing to nothing. She saw something awful in the very simplicity she failed to understand" (6.96). So could Daisy have really been happy if she ran off with Gatsby? Unlikely.

Many people tie Gatsby's obsessive pursuit of Daisy to the American Dream itself—the dream is as alluring as Daisy but as ultimately elusive and even deadly.

Their relationship is also a meditation on change —as much as Gatsby wants to repeat the past, he can't. Daisy has moved on and he can never return to that beautiful, perfect moment when he kissed her for the first time and wedded all her hopes and dreams to her.

Relationship 2: Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson

In contrast to Gatsby and Daisy's long history, the novel's other affair began much more recently: Tom and Myrtle start their relationship a few months before the novel opens.

Tom and Myrtle Relationship Description

Myrtle sees the affair as romantic and a ticket out of her marriage, while Tom sees it as just another affair, and Myrtle as one of a string of mistresses.

The pair has undeniable physical chemistry and attraction to each other, perhaps more than any other pairing in the book.

Perhaps due to Myrtle's tragic and unexpected death, Tom does display some emotional attachment to her, which complicates a reading of him as a purely antagonistic figure—or of their relationship as purely physical. So what drives this affair? What does it reveal about Tom and Myrtle? Let's find out.

Tom and Myrtle Relationship Quotes

"I think it's cute," said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. "How much is it?"

"That dog?" He looked at it admiringly. "That dog will cost you ten dollars."

The airedale—undoubtedly there was an airedale concerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and settled down into Mrs. Wilson's lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" she asked delicately.

"That dog? That dog's a boy."

"It's a bitch," said Tom decisively. "Here's your money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it." (2.38-43)

This passage is great because it neatly displays Tom and Myrtle's different attitudes toward the affair . Myrtle thinks that Tom is spoiling her specifically, and that he cares about her more than he really does—after all, he stops to buy her a dog just because she says it's cute and insists she wants one on a whim.

But to Tom, the money isn't a big deal. He casually throws away the 10 dollars, aware he's being scammed but not caring, since he has so much money at his disposal. He also insists that he knows more than the dog seller and Myrtle, showing how he looks down at people below his own class—but Myrtle misses this because she's infatuated with both the new puppy and Tom himself.

Myrtle pulled her chair close to mine, and suddenly her warm breath poured over me the story of her first meeting with Tom.

"It was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the last ones left on the train. I was going up to New York to see my sister and spend the night. He had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes and I couldn't keep my eyes off him but every time he looked at me I had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head. When we came into the station he was next to me and his white shirt-front pressed against my arm—and so I told him I'd have to call a policeman, but he knew I lied. I was so excited that when I got into a taxi with him I didn't hardly know I wasn't getting into a subway train. All I kept thinking about, over and over, was 'You can't live forever, you can't live forever.' " (2.119-20)

Myrtle, twelve years into a marriage she's unhappy in, sees her affair with Tom as a romantic escape. She tells the story of how she and Tom met like it's the beginning of a love story. In reality, it's pretty creepy —Tom sees a woman he finds attractive on a train and immediately goes and presses up to her like and convinces her to go sleep with him immediately. Not exactly the stuff of classic romance!

Combined with the fact Myrtle believes Daisy's Catholicism (a lie) is what keeps her and Tom apart, you see that despite Myrtle's pretensions of worldliness, she actually knows very little about Tom or the upper classes, and is a poor judge of character. She is an easy person for Tom to take advantage of.

Some time toward midnight Tom Buchanan and Mrs. Wilson stood face to face discussing in impassioned voices whether Mrs. Wilson had any right to mention Daisy's name.

"Daisy! Daisy! Daisy!" shouted Mrs. Wilson. "I'll say it whenever I want to! Daisy! Dai——"

Making a short deft movement Tom Buchanan broke her nose with his open hand. (2.124-6)

In case the reader was still wondering that perhaps Myrtle's take on the relationship had some basis in truth, this is a cold hard dose of reality. Tom's vicious treatment of Myrtle reminds the reader of his brutality and the fact that, to him, Myrtle is just another affair, and he would never in a million years leave Daisy for her.

Despite the violence of this scene, the affair continues. Myrtle is either so desperate to escape her marriage or so self-deluded about what Tom thinks of her (or both) that she stays with Tom after this ugly scene.

There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind, and as we drove away Tom was feeling the hot whips of panic. His wife and his mistress, until an hour ago secure and inviolate, were slipping precipitately from his control. (7.164)

Chapter 2 gives us lots of insight into Myrtle's character and how she sees her affair with Tom. But other than Tom's physical attraction to Myrtle, we don't get as clear of a view of his motivations until later on. In Chapter 7, Tom panics once he finds out George knows about his wife's affair. We learn here that control is incredibly important to Tom—control of his wife, control of his mistress, and control of society more generally (see his rant in Chapter 1 about the "Rise of the Colored Empires" ).

So just as he passionately rants and raves against the "colored races," he also gets panicked and angry when he sees that he is losing control both over Myrtle and Daisy. This speaks to Tom's entitlement —both as a wealthy person, as a man, and as a white person—and shows how his relationship with Myrtle is just another display of power. It has very little to do with his feelings for Myrtle herself. So as the relationship begins to slip from his fingers, he panics—not because he's scared of losing Myrtle, but because he's scared of losing a possession.

"And if you think I didn't have my share of suffering—look here, when I went to give up that flat and saw that damn box of dog biscuits sitting there on the sideboard I sat down and cried like a baby. By God it was awful——" (9.145)

Despite Tom's abhorrent behavior throughout the novel, at the very end, Nick leaves us with an image of Tom confessing to crying over Myrtle. This complicates the reader's desire to see Tom as a straightforward villain. This confession of emotion certainly doesn't redeem Tom, but it does prevent you from seeing him as a complete monster.

Tom and Myrtle Relationship Analysis

Just as George and Myrtle's marriage serves as a foil to Tom and Daisy's, Tom and Myrtle's affair is a foil for Daisy and Gatsby's . While Daisy and Gatsby have history, Tom and Myrtle got together recently. And while their relationship seems to be driven by physical attraction, Gatsby is attracted to Daisy's wealth and status.

The tragic end to this affair, as well as Daisy and Gatsby's, reinforces the idea that class is an enormous, insurmountable barrier , and that when people try to circumvent the barrier by dating across classes, they end up endangering themselves.

Tom and Myrtle's affair also speaks to the unfair advantages that Tom has as a wealthy, white man. Even though for a moment he felt himself losing control over his life, he quickly got it back and was able to hide in his money while Gatsby, Myrtle, and George all ended up dead thanks to their connection to the Buchanans.

In short, Tom and Myrtle's relationship allows Fitzgerald to sharply critique the world of the wealthy, old-money class in 1920s New York . By showing Tom's affair with a working-class woman, Nick reveals Tom's ugliest behavior as well as the cruelty of class divisions during the roaring twenties.

Relationship 3: Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker

We've covered the novel's two married couples—the Buchanans and the Wilsons—as well as the affairs of three out of four of those married parties. But there is one more relationship in the novel, one that is a bit disconnected to the others. I'm talking, of course, about Nick and Jordan.

Nick and Jordan Relationship Description

Nick and Jordan are the only couple without any prior contact before the novel begins (aside from Nick apparently seeing her photo once in a magazine and hearing about her attempt to cheat). Jordan is a friend of Daisy's who is staying with her, and Nick meets Jordan when he goes to have dinner with the Buchanans.

We can observe their relationship most closely in Chapters 3 and 4, as Nick gets closer to Jordan despite needing to break off his relationship back home first. However, their relationship takes a back seat in the middle and end of the novel as the drama of Daisy's affair with Gatsby, and Tom's with Myrtle, plays out. So by the end of the novel, Nick sees Jordan is just as self-centered and immoral as Tom and Daisy, and his earlier infatuation fades to disgust. She, in turn, calls him out for not being as honest and careful as he presents himself as.

So what's the story with Nick and Jordan? Why include their relationship at all? Let's dig into what sparks the relationship and the insights they give us into the other characters.

Nick and Jordan Relationship Quotes

I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before. (1.57)

As Nick eyes Jordan in Chapter 1, we see his immediate physical attraction to her , though it's not as potent as Tom's to Myrtle. And similarly to Gatsby's attraction to Daisy being to her money and voice, Nick is pulled in by Jordan's posture, her "wan, charming discontented face"— her attitude and status are more alluring than her looks alone . So Nick's attraction to Jordan gives us a bit of insight both in how Tom sees Myrtle and how Gatsby sees Daisy.

"Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon."

"Of course you will," confirmed Daisy. "In fact I think I'll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I'll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing——" (1.131-2)

Throughout the novel, we see Nick avoiding getting caught up in relationships—the woman he mentions back home, the woman he dates briefly in his office, Myrtle's sister—though he doesn't protest to being "flung together" with Jordan. Perhaps this is because Jordan would be a step up for Nick in terms of money and class, which speaks to Nick's ambition and class-consciousness , despite the way he paints himself as an everyman. Furthermore, unlike these other women, Jordan isn't clingy—she lets Nick come to her. Nick sees attracted to how detached and cool she is.

"You're a rotten driver," I protested. "Either you ought to be more careful or you oughtn't to drive at all."

"I am careful."

"No, you're not."

"Well, other people are," she said lightly.

"What's that got to do with it?"

"They'll keep out of my way," she insisted. "It takes two to make an accident."

"Suppose you met somebody just as careless as yourself."

"I hope I never will," she answered. "I hate careless people. That's why I like you."

Her grey, sun-strained eyes stared straight ahead, but she had deliberately shifted our relations, and for a moment I thought I loved her. (3.162-70)

Here, Nick is attracted to Jordan's blasé attitude and her confidence that others will avoid her careless behavior—an attitude she can afford because of her money. In other words, Nick seems fascinated by the world of the super-wealthy and the privilege it grants its members.

So just as Gatsby falls in love with Daisy and her wealthy status, Nick also seems attracted to Jordan for similar reasons. However, this conversation not only foreshadows the tragic car accident later in the novel, but it also hints at what Nick will come to find repulsive about Jordan: her callous disregard for everyone but herself .

It was dark now, and as we dipped under a little bridge I put my arm around Jordan's golden shoulder and drew her toward me and asked her to dinner. Suddenly I wasn't thinking of Daisy and Gatsby any more but of this clean, hard, limited person who dealt in universal skepticism and who leaned back jauntily just within the circle of my arm. A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: "There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired." (4.164)

Nick, again with Jordan, seems exhilarated to be with someone who is a step above him in terms of social class, exhilarated to be a "pursuing" person, rather than just busy or tired . Seeing the usually level-headed Nick this enthralled gives us some insight into Gatsby's infatuation with Daisy, and also allows us to glimpse Nick-the-person, rather than Nick-the-narrator.

And again, we get a sense of what attracts him to Jordan—her clean, hard, limited self, her skepticism, and jaunty attitude. It's interesting to see these qualities become repulsive to Nick just a few chapters later.

Just before noon the phone woke me and I started up with sweat breaking out on my forehead. It was Jordan Baker; she often called me up at this hour because the uncertainty of her own movements between hotels and clubs and private houses made her hard to find in any other way. Usually her voice came over the wire as something fresh and cool as if a divot from a green golf links had come sailing in at the office window but this morning it seemed harsh and dry.

"I've left Daisy's house," she said. "I'm at Hempstead and I'm going down to Southampton this afternoon."

Probably it had been tactful to leave Daisy's house, but the act annoyed me and her next remark made me rigid.

"You weren't so nice to me last night."

"How could it have mattered then?" (8.49-53)

Later in the novel, after Myrtle's tragic death, Jordan's casual, devil-may-care attitude is no longer cute—in fact, Nick finds it disgusting . How can Jordan care so little about the fact that someone died, and instead be most concerned with Nick acting cold and distant right after the accident?

In this brief phone conversation, we thus see Nick's infatuation with Jordan ending, replaced with the realization that Jordan's casual attitude is indicative of everything Nick hates about the rich, old money group . So by extension, Nick's relationship with Jordan represents how his feelings about the wealthy have evolved—at first he was drawn in by their cool, detached attitudes, but eventually found himself repulsed by their carelessness and cruelty.

She was dressed to play golf and I remember thinking she looked like a good illustration, her chin raised a little, jauntily, her hair the color of an autumn leaf, her face the same brown tint as the fingerless glove on her knee. When I had finished she told me without comment that she was engaged to another man. I doubted that though there were several she could have married at a nod of her head but I pretended to be surprised. For just a minute I wondered if I wasn't making a mistake, then I thought it all over again quickly and got up to say goodbye.

"Nevertheless you did throw me over," said Jordan suddenly. "You threw me over on the telephone. I don't give a damn about you now but it was a new experience for me and I felt a little dizzy for a while."

We shook hands.

"Oh, and do you remember—" she added, "——a conversation we had once about driving a car?"

"Why—not exactly."

"You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were rather an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride."

"I'm thirty," I said. "I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honor." (9.129-135)

In their official break-up, Jordan calls out Nick for claiming to be honest and straightforward but in fact being prone to lying himself . So even as Nick is disappointed in Jordan's behavior, Jordan is disappointed to find just another "bad driver" in Nick, and both seem to mutually agree they would never work as a couple. It's interesting to see Nick called out for dishonest behavior for once. For all of his judging of others, he's clearly not a paragon of virtue, and Jordan clearly recognizes that.

This break-up is also interesting because it's the only time we see a relationship end because the two members choose to walk away from each other—all the other failed relationships (Daisy/Gatsby, Tom/Myrtle, Myrtle/George) ended because one or both members died . So perhaps there is a safe way out of a bad relationship in Gatsby—to walk away early, even if it's difficult and you're still "half in love" with the other person (9.136).

If only Gatsby could have realized the same thing.

Nick and Jordan Relationship Analysis

Nick and Jordan's relationship is interesting, because it's the only straightforward dating we see in the novel (it's neither a marriage nor an illicit affair), and it doesn't serve as an obvious foil to the other relationships. But it does echo Daisy and Gatsby's relationship , in that a poorer man desires a richer girl, and for that reason gives us additional insight into Gatsby's love for Daisy. But it also quietly echoes Tom's relationship with Myrtle , since we Nick seems physically drawn to Jordan as well.

The relationship also is one of the ways we get insight into Nick. For instance, he only really admits to his situation with the woman back at home when he's talking about being attracted to Jordan. "I'd been writing letters once a week and signing them: "Love, Nick," and all I could think of was how, when that certain girl played tennis, a faint mustache of perspiration appeared on her upper lip. Nevertheless there was a vague understanding that had to be tactfully broken off before I was free" (3.170). Through Jordan, we actually see Nick experience exhilaration and love and attraction.

Finally, through his relationship with Jordan, we can easily see Nick's evolving attitude toward the wealthy elite. While he allows himself to be charmed at first by this fast-moving, wealthy, and careless world, he eventually becomes disgusted by the utter lack of morality or compassion for others.

Discussion and Essay Topics on Love in The Great Gatsby

These are a few typical essay topics surrounding issues of love, desire, and relationships you should be prepared to write about. Some of them give you the opportunity to zoom in on just one couple, while others have you analyze the relationships in the book more generally. As always, it will be important to close-read, find key lines to use as evidence, and argue your point with a clearly-organized essay. (You can read more of our essay writing tips in our Character Analysis article .) So let's take a look at a few common love and relationships prompts to see this analysis in action!

Is there any couple in The Great Gatsby that has true love?

For any essay topic that asks if characters in a book represent some kind of virtue (whether that's true love, honesty, morality, or anything else), you should start by coming up with a definition of the value . For example, in this case, you should give a definition of "true love," since how you define true love will affect who you choose and how you make your argument.

For example, if you argue that true love comes down to stability, you could potentially argue Tom and Daisy have true love, since they actually remain together, unlike any of the other couples. But if you argue true love is based on strong emotion, you might say Gatsby's love for Daisy is the truest. So however you define true love, make sure to clearly state that definition, since it will shape your argument!

Remember it's also possible in a prompt like this to argue that no one in the book has true love. You would still start by defining true love, but then you would explain why each of the major couples does not have real love, and perhaps briefly explain what element each couple is missing.

Is The Great Gatsby a love story or a satire?

Some essays have you zoom way out and consider what The Great Gatsby's overall genre (or type) is. The most common argument is that, while Gatsby is a tragic love story on the surface (the love of Gatsby and Daisy), it's really more of a satire of wealthy New York society, or a broader critique of the American Dream. This is because the themes of money , society and class, and the American Dream are pretty constant, while the relationships are more of a vehicle to examine those themes.

To argue which genre Gatsby is (whether you say "it's more of a love story" or "it's more of a satire"), define your chosen genre and explain why Gatsby fits the definition . Make sure to include some evidence from the novel's final chapter, no matter what you argue. Endings are important, so make sure you link Gatsby's ending to the genre you believe it is. For example, if you're arguing "Gatsby is a love story," you could emphasize the more hopeful, optimistic parts of Nick's final lines. But if you argue "Gatsby is satire," you would look at the sad, harsh details of the final chapter—Gatsby's sparsely-attended funeral, the crude word scrawled against his back steps, etc. Also, be sure to check out our post on the novel's ending for more analysis.

Is what Gatsby feels for Daisy love, obsession, affection, or accumulation/objectification? What is Fitzgerald's message here?

A really common essay topic/topic of discussion is the question of Gatsby's love for Daisy (and sometimes, Daisy's love for Gatsby): is it real, is it a symbol for something else, and what does it reveal about both Daisy and Gatsby's characters?

As we discussed above, Gatsby's love for Daisy is definitely more intense than Daisy's love for Gatsby, and furthermore, Gatsby's love for Daisy seems tied up in an obsession with her wealth and the status she represents . From there, it's up to you how you argue how you see Gatsby's love for Daisy—whether it's primarily an obsession with wealth, whether Daisy is just an object to be collected, or whether you think Gatsby actually loves Daisy the person, not just Daisy the golden girl.

Analyze the nature of male-female relationships in the novel.

This is a zoomed-out prompt that wants you to talk about the nature of relationships in general in the novel. Still, even though we have clearly identified the five major relationships, it might be complicated for you to try and talk about every single one in depth in just one essay. Instead, it will be more manageable for you to use evidence from two to three of the couples to make your point .

You could explore how the relationships expose that America is in fact a classist society. After all, the only relationship that lasts (Tom and Daisy's) lasts because of the security of being in the same class, while the others fail either due to cross-class dating or one member (Myrtle) desperately trying to break out of her given class.

You could also talk about how the power dynamics within the relationships vary wildly , but only the couple that seems to have a stable relationship is also described as "conspiratorial" and often as a "they"—that is, Tom and Daisy Buchanan. So perhaps Fitzgerald does envision a sort of lasting partnership being possible, if certain conditions (like both members being happy with the amount of money in the marriage) are met.

This prompt and ones like it give you a lot of freedom, but make sure not to bite off more than you chew!

What's Next?

Wondering how else you can pair these characters in an essay? Check out our article on comparing and contrasting the most common character pairings in The Great Gatsby .

Why is money so crucial in the world of the novel? Read more about money and materialism in Gatsby to find out.

Need to get the events of the book straight? Check out our chapter summaries to get a handle on the various parties, liaisons, flashbacks, and deaths. Get started with our book summary here !

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Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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Themes of Marriage & Love in Literature: Examples & Quotes

Have you ever loved? Even if you haven’t, you’ve seen it in countless movies, heard about it in songs, and read about it in some of the greatest books in world literature.

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The picture shows the definition of love as a literary theme.

If you want to find out more about love as a literary theme, you came to the right place. In this article by Custom-Writing.org , we will examine love’s different manifestations. We’ll also look into the concept of marriage, closely connected with the theme of love.

💕 Love in Literature: Definition & History
💑 Types of Love Themes
💎 Marriage in Literature
Pride and Prejudice
Wuthering Heights
The Great Gatsby

🔍 References

💕 theme of love in literature: definition & history.

Love as a literary theme deals with relationships between people based on affection or desire. It’s a fundamental component of many literary works and one of the most prominent themes in art.

It’s not surprising that people find it universally relatable and infinitely compelling. We come across the theme of love in many genres, but it is mainly associated with medieval and classic romance literature.

Medieval Romance Literature Characteristics

Medieval romance literature, as we understand it, dates back to 12th-century France. Chivalry was the centerpiece of most romances, and it was, of course, accompanied by love.

Courtly Love Definition

Courtly love is the central concept of medieval romance. Why was it so important? Well, the essence of chivalry did not boil down to being brave and masterful in battle. More critical was the knight’s dedication and reverence to his lady, as well as unswerving allegiance to his friends and the king. This devotion of a knight to a lady is called courtly love.

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Interestingly, it didn’t matter whether the parties were married or not. According to Medieval Life and Times, one of the rules of courtly love stated that “ Marriage is no real excuse for not loving .”

Tragedy was also present in chivalric romances. A great example is Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur . Lancelot and Queen Guinevere’s doomed affair couldn’t end in any other way but grievous.

Classic Romance Novels

As you may have guessed, romance novels focus on romantic relationships. For centuries, people have been finding escape in the fictional world of love with its hardships, obstacles, and high emotional stakes, usually resulting in weddings.

There are a few subgenres of a classic romance novel. The most prominent ones are the following:

💑 Types of Love Themes in Literature

Have you ever wondered why there’s no one concise explanation of what love is? One of the main reasons is that there certainly isn’t just one type of love. Instead, there are many, and in some languages, there are even separate words for them .

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What exactly are these types? Well, examples may include romantic, platonic, unrequited, forbidden, and familial love. Since there are so many variations, there must be just as many corresponding plots, each with distinctive features. Let’s talk about them.

The picture shows different types of love in literature.

Definition of Romantic Love in Literature

Romantic love in literature is a feeling of intense affection and desire of one character for another. It usually implies intimate relationships between those involved and is distinguished by intensity, idealization, and passion.

Romantic love has a ubiquitous presence across all arts and not just literature. It has been pivotal in shaping our culture and understanding interpersonal relationships. Since it’s been around for so long, it’s hard to tell whether it evolved naturally and found its way into art or was born as a literary construct that found its way into our lives.

Platonic Love vs. Romantic Love Themes

Platonic love is synonymous with friendship and is never physically intimate. In contrast, romantic love involves friendship as well as intimacy, usually culminating in sexual contact. Both types play an important role in people’s lives and can be great literary material.

Unrequited Love Stories

Unrequited love is the romantic feeling that is not reciprocated. The dreaded state of not being loved back has been the source of inspiration for numerous literary works.

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There is no unanimous consensus on whether unrequited love is good or bad for a person. Compare these two instances:

If we look back at the chivalric romance novels, we will see that unrequited love was the source of motivation and a call to action. It required a knight to perform all kinds of heroic deeds to prove his love to a lady. In this, they found the meaning of life.
In contrast, works such as Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther depict a situation far removed from the 12th century’s image of knightly devotion. Young Werther’s unrequited love is the epitome of sorrow, leading to his untimely end.

Love Triangle Stories

In love triangle stories, there are at least three main characters—a hero and two suitors. The hero has to choose between the two lovers, resulting in either one or three broken hearts. Whatever the outcome is, it’s never a win-win situation.

Famous Love Triangles in Literature

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen . Written in 1813, it tells about the slowly developing affair between Elizabeth Bennet and Mr.Darcy, with Wickham serving as the third party in the triangle.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë . Heavily influenced by Gothic fiction, this sad, cheerless book talks about a troubled relationship between Heathcliff, Catherine, and her husband Edgar, which is bound to end in disaster.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald . This one is the story of a man who refuses to give up on the desire to reconnect with the married woman he once called his own.

Forbidden Love Stories

Forbidden love in literature is characterized by an almost immediate attraction between characters. But, like in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet , the idyllic picture is blurred by an obligatory obstacle on the way to perfect love, such as:

Familial Love in Literature

A familial kind of love is cultivated within a family unit. It is rooted in trust, commitment, affection, and loyalty, regardless whether you are connected to your family members by blood or not. This kind of love is distinctively different from others. It doesn’t include the same level of intimacy as in romance, but it doesn’t take away from the deep connection, friendship, and trust.

Familial love is fertile soil for writers. The 19th-century heart-warming classic Little Women by Louisa May Alcott may be one of the most splendid examples of family love portrayal in literature. Another example is the 21st-century post-apocalyptic novel The Road by Cormac McCarthy .

💎 Stories of Marriage in Literature

Much like in real life, marriage in literature has many faces. Some stories portray happily married people exuding joy, while others are depictions of deep sorrow. Marriage can be a source of bliss, but at times it gets corrupted by oppression and patriarchy. As Leo Tolstoy told us in Anna Karenina , “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

The picture says that marriage in literature is portrayed as either happy or loveless.

A happy story will most likely end in an equally happy marriage. The main characters will inevitably possess key features that make them perfect for each other.
Tragic stories usually look at experienced couples battling marital problems. It’s often connected with the issue of appearance vs. reality. We all have an idea of a happy family, and people try to stick to it no matter what. However, only they can see what goes on behind closed doors. It may be an issue of jealousy, untrusting or untrustworthy spouses, disrespectful attitudes, and downright boredom.

Happy Marriage Stories

So, what are those key factors of a happy marriage that we have mentioned? There are a few popular ones that you are likely to encounter in literature, as well as in reality:

Mutual respect. By default, love should come with mutual appreciation. Otherwise, it is no love at all.
Support. A loving husband or wife will stand behind their spouse’s decision. It’s a logical outcome of respect.
Partnership. Decisions are made together, and responsibility is divided between the two.
Room to evolve. Nothing holds you back from becoming the best version of yourself.

Loveless Marriage Stories

Loveless marriage stories are abundant in world literature. Some can be a result of people misinterpreting their feelings for one another. Others come as an tragic result of an arrangement. Since arranged marriages are made with money and status in mind rather than love and respect, it is no wonder they fall apart.

Married but in Love with Someone Else

One of the types of an unhappy marriage is when the protagonist is married and in love. But—plot twist—they have feelings for someone other than their spouse. It is closely connected with the love triangle theme and often results in adultery and a tragic ending, like in Anna Karenina or Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary . This type of story can also tell about two characters in love with one another but married to someone else.

📚 Marriage and Love Themes in Literature: Examples & Quotes

Seeing that love and marriage are so prevalent in fiction, there is no shortage of examples and quotes we can share with you.

Love in Pride and Prejudice

No conversation about love is complete without mentioning Pride and Prejudice by the English novelist Jane Austen. Love comes in many forms in this masterpiece. Let’s have a look at a few of them:

Theme of Marriage in Pride and Prejudice

Much like the theme of love, the marriage theme is equally nonuniform in Pride and Prejudice . We see both positive and negative examples of relationships built on very different things:

Lydia and Wickham. “ A disaster waiting to happen” would be a good description of Lydia’s elopement with Wickham. He doesn’t love her, and she is not sure of her feelings but hopes for marriage. While Darcy and Elizabeth eventually develop a true love for each other, the relationships between Lydia and Wickham are built on the prospects of Wickham getting away from debt.
The Gardiner family . A great contrast to Mr. and Mrs. Bennet, the Gardiners are well-intended, intelligent, and reasonable people who play a key role in Elizabeth and Darcy’s blooming relationship. Mr. Gardiner, being Mrs. Bennet’s brother, is portrayed as someone drastically different from his sister. The relationships between the Gardiners are also more mature and respectful than those of the Bennet couple.

Eager to learn more about the novel and its themes? Check out our analysis of Pride and Prejudice .

Pride and Prejudice: Love Quotes

No one is better at portraying the relationships in a novel than its author. Here are a few most famous quotes about love, which show the true feelings of the well-known characters, from Jane Austen herself:

She began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man who, in disposition and talents, would most suit her. His understanding and temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her wishes. It was a union that must have been to the advantage of both: by her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved; and from his judgement, information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance. Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 50

In vain, have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you. Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 34

Oh, Lizzy! do anything rather than marry without affection. Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 59

Love in Wuthering Heights

This timeless classic by Emily Bronte is also not on the list of novels with a happy ending. Nevertheless, it’s a gift that keeps on giving: love is abundant here, but it’s also very different. Let’s have a look at the shapes it takes in Wuthering Heights :

The love between Catherine and Heathcliff — the two main characters—is not the typical romantic attachment we’re used to seeing in films and novels. It is passionate but obsessive , destructive , and filled to the brim with jealousy . There is no happy ending when two people can neither be together nor apart. The situation is further convoluted by the societal prejudice of the time, Heathcliff’s troublesome and vengeful nature, and Catherine’s desire to rise through the ranks of society.
There’s also love between Catherine and Edgar —the man she eventually marries and has a daughter with. Edgar, being very different from Heathcliff, treats Catherine with affection and tenderness . He is not tormented by social class inequality and lack of money. While he’s weaker and softer in personality than Heathcliff, he can give Catherine the status that she desires. Unfortunately, none of this can bring Catherine true love.

Theme of Marriage in Wuthering Heights

Catherine’s love triangle between hetself, Heathcliff, and Edgar makes her face a painful choice: to surrender to her love for forever agonizing Heathcliff, a man of lowly background, or to marry an affectionate man of much higher class.

At one point, Catherine declares: “I am Heathcliff!” meaning that their identities are so alike that they’re essentially one person; they share a soul. But in the same conversation, she admits that marrying Heathcliff would “degrade” her.

On the contrary, marrying Edgar Linton can lift her up. She hopes that his money will help not only her but also her soulmate, Heathcliff. In her eagerness to preserve both relationships and get the best of both worlds, Catherine chooses to marry Edgar. This selfish act drives Heathcliff away and later proves to be a tragic mistake.

Feel free to read our Wuthering Heights summary to learn more about the novel’s plot.

Wuthering Heights: Love Quotes

To better understand the tragic torment of the main characters in this outstanding gothic novel, let’s take a look at a few quotes:

He shall never know I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same. Wuthering Heights , Chapter 9

Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you–haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe–I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always–take any form–drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul! Wuthering Heights , Chapter 16

If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day. Wuthering Heights , Chapter 14

Theme of Love in The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a story of pain, longing, and obsession . The love triangle here is somewhat reminiscent of the one in Wuthering Heights . Jay Gatsby and Daisy are in love, Jay goes to war, and Daisy marries Tom Buchanan, breaking Gatsby’s heart upon his return five years later.

What might appear as a choice between two lovers really is a choice between love and prestige:

Jay Gatsby , being the nouveau riche, can only offer Daisy his imperfect version of love.
Tom Buchanan can offer safety, status, and endless money for her wishes.

Daisy shows her true colors when she chooses Tom and, by association, wealth and security.

Unfortunately, Gatsby cannot give up on the idea of having Daisy all to himself. He finds it difficult to accept that the last piece of the perfect puzzle that constitutes his dream is missing. This unreadiness to come to terms with defeat is what ultimately destroys the Great Gatsby.

Marriage in The Great Gatsby

As we’ve already mentioned, Daisy marries Tom not because she’s in love with him. Their marriage is loveless. Her glittering persona hides superficiality, and she doesn’t suffer much when making her choice. Let’s see why.

The main issue here is that of old vs. new money . Jay represents new money obtained through shady ways. Tom is old money , which is undeniably more powerful, alluring, and prestigious. And that’s the main reason why Daisy chooses in Tom’s favor.

You will find even more info in our article on The Great Gatsby characters . Check it out!

The Great Gatsby: Love Quotes

Here’s how F.S. Fitzgerald conveyed the theme of love and obsession in The Great Gatsby :

He hadn’t once ceased looking at Daisy, and I think he revalued everything in his house according to the measure of response it drew from her well-loved eyes. Sometimes, too, he stared around at his possessions in a dazed way, as though in her actual and astounding presence none of it was any longer real. Once he nearly toppled down a flight of stairs. The Great Gatsby , Chapter 5

He wanted nothing less of Daisy than that she should go to Tom and say: ‘I never loved you.’ After she had obliterated four years with that sentence they could decide upon the more practical measures to be taken. One of them was that, after she was free, they were to go back to Louisville and be married from her house – just as if it were five years ago. The Great Gatsby , Chapter 6

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete. The Great Gatsby , Chapter 6

As you can see, much has been written about love—both happy and tragic. We hope that our article inspired your interest in further exploration of the topic. Tell us about your favorite literary work about love in the comment section below!

❓ Theme of Love and Marriage FAQs

Courtly love literature speaks extensively about the cult of chivalry and knighthood. A truly chivalrous knight is kind yet brave and steadfast in battle, loyal to his king and brothers in arms, and faithful to his lady.

Catherine’s one true love is Heathcliff. She believes they are alike and considers him her only true friend. She says “yes” to Edgar’s proposal to secure her position in society and help Heathcliff but realizes she’s made a mistake when it’s too late.

Gatsby thought that he loved Daisy, but he only loved what she represented to him—a perfect life, the American dream, and wealth. He once said: “Her voice is full of money,” which clearly indicates his true feelings.

Romance in medieval literature is associated with chivalry as a set of characteristics and actions of a knight. One of the most notable examples of chivalry is found in Sir Thomas Malory’s The Death of Arthur , which is about the Knights of the Round Table.

Wuthering Heights has a lot in common with a love story, but it is also more than that. The theme of love is inseparable from that of destruction and revenge. Heathcliff seeks vengeance for his broken heart, and his disturbing love eventually becomes a dark obsession.

The Abject Lover of the Courtly Love Era: Research Gate
Romance: Literature and Performance: Britannica
Love and Chivalry in the Middle Ages: British Library
Writing 101: What Is a Romance Novel?: Masterclass
Romantic Love: A Literary Universal?: Project MUSE
Love in Literature: The Guardian
Reading Remedy: Books to Help You Deal with Unrequited Love
Family Love: What It Is, What It Looks Like, And How To Make It Happen: Better Help
Why Family Is The One Thing Authors Will Always Write About: Huffpost
Why the Marriage Plot Need Never Get Old: The New Yorker
10 Novels That Teach You Something About Marriage: Barnes and Noble
11 of the Worst Marriages in Literature: Electric Literature
Lost Loves in Wuthering Heights: Georgetown University
Daisy Buchanan: Love, Folly and Money in The Great Gatsby: The Artifice
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Essay Writing Guide

Thesis Statement Examples

20+ Thesis Statement Examples for Different Types of Essays?

Thesis Statement Examples for Different Essay Types

A thesis statement is like the central message of your essay. It states the main claim along with the reason or rationale that supports the claim. It's a single sentence that sums up what your essay is all about.

When someone reads your essay, they should know from the thesis statement what your essay is trying to prove or explain.

Now, in some cases, like more complex essays or research papers, you might use a three-point thesis statement. This means your thesis statement has not just one, but three main ideas or arguments that your essay will explore.

Here are some good thesis statement examples for the common types of essays:

Argumentative Thesis Statement Examples

An argumentative essay persuades by presenting evidence on a debatable topic. Here is what a thesis statement looks like for an argumentative essay:

Claim + Reasons/Evidence

Here are argumentative essay thesis statement examples:

"Social media negatively impacts mental health by fostering excessive comparison and cyberbullying, leading to increased stress and anxiety among users."
"Stricter gun control laws are necessary to reduce firearm-related violence in our society, as evidenced by lower rates of gun violence in countries with stringent gun control measures and the potential to prevent potentially dangerous individuals from acquiring firearms."

Informative Thesis Statement Examples

An informative essay educates by presenting facts and details on a specific topic. The thesis statement typically takes this form:

Topic + Main Points

Here are informative essay thesis statement examples:

"The history, symptoms, and available treatments for diabetes provide essential knowledge for individuals managing this chronic condition."
"Exploring the causes, effects, and preventive measures of climate change sheds light on the urgent need for global environmental action."

Literary Analysis Thesis Statement Examples

In a literary analysis essay , the writer examines a specific element of a literary work. The thesis statement for literary analysis generally follows this structure:

Analysis of Element in Literary Work + Significance

Here are literary analysis thesis statement examples:

"The symbolism of the 'green light' in 'The Great Gatsby' represents Gatsby's unattainable American Dream and the disillusionment of the Jazz Age."
"Examining the character of Macbeth's descent into madness in 'Macbeth' reveals the tragic consequences of unchecked ambition in Shakespearean tragedy."

Analytical Thesis Statement Examples

An analytical essay delves into a topic by evaluating and presenting multiple perspectives. The thesis statement in an analytical essay often appears as:

Topic + Analysis/Examination

Here are analytical essay thesis statement examples:

"Analyzing the economic impact of globalization on developing countries reveals both opportunities for growth and potential challenges."
"An examination of societal norms in 'The Catcher in the Rye' underscores the alienation experienced by the protagonist, Holden Caulfield."

Expository Thesis Statement Examples

Expository essays aim to explain or inform by providing details and facts on a subject. The typical expository thesis statement format is:

Subject + Key Aspects

Here are expository essay thesis statement examples:

"The exploration of the solar system, including the sun, planets, and asteroids, showcases the vastness and complexity of our cosmic neighborhood."
"Understanding the process of photosynthesis, its significance in plant growth, and its role in producing oxygen is vital for comprehending Earth's ecosystems."

Cause And Effect Thesis Statement Examples

Cause and effect essays investigate the relationships between events or phenomena. The thesis statement structure in a cause and effect essay is:

Cause + Effect

Here are cause and effect essay thesis statement examples:

"The increase in technology usage has led to a decline in face-to-face social interactions among young adults, contributing to feelings of isolation."
"The depletion of the ozone layer results in harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation reaching the Earth's surface, leading to various environmental and health consequences."

Narrative Thesis Statement Examples

Narrative essays recount personal experiences or stories. The thesis statement in a narrative essay is often shaped as:

Personal Experience/Story + Significance

Here are narrative essay thesis statement examples:

"My backpacking adventure through the Appalachian Trail taught me resilience, self-reliance, and a deep appreciation for the beauty of nature."
"The story of my grandmother's immigration journey reflects the strength, determination, and sacrifices made by countless immigrants seeking a better life."

Thesis Statement Examples For Opinion Essays

Opinion essays express the author's viewpoint on a particular subject. You can follow this structure to write a thesis statement in an opinion essay:

Topic + Opinion/Position

Here are thesis statement examples for opinion essays:

"Universal healthcare is a fundamental right that should be accessible to all citizens, ensuring equitable access to medical services."
"The widespread use of technology in education enhances learning opportunities, preparing students for a tech-driven world."

Thesis Statement Examples for Problem Solution Essay

In a problem-solution essay, the writer identifies a specific problem and proposes a viable solution or solutions to address it. The thesis statement in a problem-solution essay typically follows this structure:

Problem + Solution

Here are thesis statement examples for problem solution essays:

"The rising prevalence of food insecurity can be mitigated through community-based programs that promote urban farming and food distribution initiatives."
"To combat the issue of plastic pollution in oceans, a comprehensive approach involving strict regulations, public awareness campaigns, and sustainable alternatives is necessary."

Thesis Statement Examples for English Essays

English essays encompass a wide range of topics, from literary analysis to language studies. The thesis statement for English essays can take various forms depending on the specific focus of the essay.

Here are thesis statement examples for different types of English essays:

For a Literary Analysis Essay: "The use of symbolism in Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter' underscores the theme of societal hypocrisy and the journey of self-redemption."
For a Language and Linguistics Essay: "Exploring the evolution of the English language through historical context reveals the influences and transformations that have shaped it into its current form."
For a Comparative Literature Essay: "Comparing the themes of love and tragedy in Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' and Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' highlights the universal aspects of human emotions."

Thesis Statement Examples for Research Paper

A research paper often critically analyzes a specific topic or issue, conducting in-depth exploration and analysis.

While all academic papers require a thesis statement to convey the central message, they differ in scope and depth.

Research paper thesis statements are broad and involve in-depth research, often including empirical research, while essay thesis statements are shorter and focus on a specific argument.

Here are some examples of research papers of different natures:

For an Analytical Research Paper: "An analysis of historical voting patterns reveals shifts in political ideologies over the past century, shedding light on changing voter demographics and their impact on contemporary elections."
For an Experimental Research Paper: "Through controlled experiments and statistical analysis, this research examines the effects of a new drug on patients with a specific medical condition, offering insights into its potential for widespread therapeutic use."
For a Comparative Research Paper: "This research paper compares and contrasts the educational systems of two countries, Japan and Finland, exploring the factors contributing to their respective success in student performance and learning outcomes."
For a Case Study Research Paper: "Through an in-depth case study of a successful tech startup, this research paper analyzes the key factors behind its rapid growth and profitability, offering valuable insights for aspiring entrepreneurs."

These examples illustrate the diversity of research paper thesis statements, each tailored to the specific focus and methodology of the research.

Elements of a Good Thesis Statement

A strong and clear thesis statement exhibits several crucial elements:

Specific Topic: It addresses a well-defined subject or issue.
Debatable Stance: The thesis takes a position that can be debated or questioned.
Narrow Focus: It doesn't encompass too broad a scope but rather hones in on a specific aspect.
Single Central Idea: It conveys a solitary, precise main point.
Supportable: It answers the question with evidence, facts, or reasons in the essay.
Clear Position: It presents a distinct viewpoint on the topic.

Example of a Good Thesis Statement

"Increasing access to quality education in underserved communities is essential for addressing socio-economic disparities, and this can be achieved through improved school funding, qualified educators, and community involvement."

Here is an analysis of the elements of the above thesis statement example:

This thesis statement exemplifies these elements well. It explicitly addresses the topic of "increasing access to quality education in underserved communities."

It takes a debatable stance as the strategies for achieving this goal can vary. It narrows the focus by discussing specific solutions: "improved school funding, qualified educators, and community involvement."

The central idea is that these actions are necessary to address socio-economic disparities through education. While the evidence isn't in the thesis itself, it's implied that the essay will support these claims . The position is clear: these actions are essential.

Here’s an example of a good thesis statement versus a bad one:

Good Vs. Bad Thesis Statement - MyPerfectWords.com

You now have a wide range of thesis statement examples to learn from.

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