WHAT MAKES A GOOD THESIS FOR A PAPER?
                         Without a good thesis, you cannot have a good paper!
 
Characteristics of a good thesis sentence.  It is specific and highly focused, not a vague generalization.  It is unified, not just a list of unrelated items.  It is interesting, sometimes even challenging or surprizing; don't be afraid to have a risky thesis, one that many people might be inclined to disagree with.  It is not obviously or trivially true - it needs to be supported or argued for.  It is not merely a statement of fact.  And from the thesis sentence alone a reader gets a pretty good idea of what ideas or topics the rest of the paper must deal with.  Example:

Thesis:  In Book 1 of the Republic Socrates criticizes several people and ideas.


 

This is horribly vague.  "criticizes" - just how critical is that?  Strong or weak, positive or negative criticizing?  Do the criticisms succeed in showing that the people or ideas are bad, weak, wrong, or what?  And if they are successful, why and how do they succeed?  If not, why not?  "several" people - how many?  If you can count, you can say how many!  If you can read, you can state their names!  "ideas" - which ideas?  Say what they are.

And it is trivial, factual, self-evident.  Anyone who's read Book 1 knows this thesis is true - it doesn't need any proof or support.

It also lacks unity.  Criticizing a person and criticizing an idea are very different tasks. Criticizing a person would involve assessing that person's character, or abilities, or accomplishments, etc.  Criticizing an idea would involve assessing its scope, consistency, relations to other ideas, usefulness for understanding or explaining things, and the like.

If this thesis were made less vague (more specific) by stating which people and what ideas, it would be far too broad and ambitious.  It would take a very long paper or a small book to adequately deal with all or most or many of  Socrates' criticisms in Book 1.

So: this thesis needs to be more specific, more debatable, more unified, and much more narrowly focused.

Improved Thesis:  In Book 1 Socrates' first attack on Polemarchus's definition of justice is unsuccessful because Socrates erroneously assumes that justice is a craft.

 
 

Here "criticizes" is replaced by "attack,"  a more vivid and specific word.  An attack is definitely negative and strong.  The "first attack on Polemarchus's definition of justice." That focuses on about two pages (332c-333e) instead of all of Book 1: much better!  But the thesis says it is unsuccessful; this is a bit of a surprize - what, the wise Socrates has failed?  On a first reading, most people think Socrates succeeded, although he wasn't too polite in the way he did it.  So this is a somewhat risky thesis; it definitely needs support. And the reason for Socrates' failure is given: an erroneous assumption.  Specifically, the assumption that justice is a craft.  Obviously, the attack is directed at an idea, the definition, not at Polemarchus as a person.

From this improved thesis, you can see pretty well what issues the rest of the paper will have to deal with.  It will have to 1) explain Polemarchus's definition of justice; 2) summarize and probably analyze some details of Socrates' attack on the definition; 3) show the reader why justice is not a craft, and  4) elaborate a bit on why, without that mistaken assumption, Socrates' attack is unsuccessful.  Notice how a well-stated thesis foreshadows the content of the rest of the paper; here you can envision a nice four-point outline, at least one good paragraph for each point.  The concluding paragraph could wrap things up by saying that if poor Polemarchus had noticed the problem with Socrates' assumption, he could have defended his definition far better than he did (which was no defense at all).

Look at the papers from previous HON 102 students to see more thesis examples.