Essays Module

Conclusion.  

Let’s return to the assignment page to see what my instructor wants from me:

• A conclusion paragraph that restates your thesis statement. The conclusion paragraph should serve as a summary of what has already been stated, so no new information is allowed.

All right. Generally speaking, a conclusion should both restate the thesis and comment on the implications of the essay’s topic. The way to restate a thesis statement is always to hold the concept in my mind, don’t look at what I’ve actually written, and state it again as though I’m just answering a friend who’s asked me, “What’s the topic of this essay you’ve written?” So if that’s what I were doing, I might say something like:

What really makes this advertisement effective at drawing non-religious students to this Christian show is that while the man’s charismatic ethos and the heightened dramatic pathos make this magic show enticing, the omission of any religious elements in the image avoids putting off the non-Christian students who don’t want to be proselytized to.

That sounds like a pretty decent summary of what I’ve said so far. I don’t think it’s worth going through my points again—I’ve recapped enough just in my restated thesis. Then for the rest of my conclusion, I want to be careful not to introduce anything new, as the requirements stated, but I do want to leave my reader with something to chew on. So let’s do some commenting:

Whatever happens once the students are drawn in, the fact that the advertisement is an effective one is undeniable. This image’s attention to its purpose and audience is what drives its success; without a careful catering to the widely inclusive demographic that it targets, and without a clear sense of what it intends to accomplish, the image couldn’t possibly engender the success that it does as it is.

I’ve taken the specifics of my essay—the way that the image functions—and broadened it very slightly, commenting now on what makes advertisements effective. It goes a little beyond recap, but there’s definitely no new information in there. I think that’s about all I want for my conclusion; it’s pretty short, but it does everything it needs to.

Formatting this in MLA (briefly: 12pt Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins, double spaced, first page heading, last name and page number on each page, Works Cited page included), I see that it’s well over the three-page minimum, so I have nothing to worry about there.

Ok, great—I have my first draft completed! I’ve been careful to say what I want to say, and I’m pretty happy with it. But I’m not done yet! Now it’s time to revise.