CONCLUSIONS: #s 57-59

57. Transition from the topic of previous paragraph to the Thesis:

Conclusion paragraphs often seem needlessly redundant and forced. Conclusions should grow naturally out of the body of the paper and should emphasize the central message of the paper. There are intentional ways to do this.

Conclusions should return to the content of the previous body paragraph and link this to the thesis in a Transitional Topic Sentence.

For example:

Here is an introduction and conclusion to an essay on Robert Frost’s poem “Design”:

Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,

On a white heal-all, holding up a moth

Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth-

Assorted characters of death and blight

Mixed ready to begin the morning right,

Like the ingredients of witches’ broth-

A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,

And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,

The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?

What brought the kindred spider to that height,

Then steered the white moth thither in the night?

What but design of darkness to appall?-

If design govern in a thing so small.

-Robert Frost

Introduction:

I remember when I first read William Blake-the first Romantic poet. I was 15 years old, sitting in a coat and tie at Shady Side Academy, and wondering what this course on Romantic poetry was going to offer. My teacher, the wild haired Mr. Hendershot who probably thought he was a Romantic poet, read us William Blake’s “The Lamb” aloud. I remember feeling slightly embarrassed about the sing songy, nursery rhyme rhythm and simple imagery of the poem. “Soft, woolly bright” clothing of the lamb? “Come on,” my adolescent, irreverent mind silently interjected. But then he read us the companion poem “The Tyger” without allowing any comment upon “The Lamb.” I can still recall two lines from that poem and these lines still seem as fresh as they did when I first heard them. Blake asked in “The Tyger,” “Did he smile on his work to see? / Did he who made the lamb make thee?” (lines 19-20). After the imagery of the tiger’s “burning eyes, twisted heart, and brain “fired in a furnace,” I was speechless. In his poem “The Tyger,” William Blake asks the same question Robert Frost asks in his poem “Design.” That is, both Blake and Frost ask why God would make creatures perfectly designed to destroy. While Blake’s tiger is hunting at night with perfect night vision (“burning bright”), Frost’s spider hunts by day in the open air with the same intensity of purpose to kill. Published in the early twentieth century, “Design” evokes the despair and disillusionment so common among modern writers. The speaker in Robert Frost’s poem “Design” questions the intention of the creator and concludes that the world is a manifestation of the creator’s evil plan. By exploring the horrifying imagery, the questions evoked by this horrifying imagery, and the multiple, dark connotations of the poem, this essay will reveal the speaker's disillusionment with the creator’s intentions .

Conclusion:

(1) Robert Frosts’s dark connotations in “Design" confirm that he questions the positive intentions of God when God created the world full of destructive power. In the poem the speaker observes the simple act of a moth being devoured by a spider; he concludes that there are destructive “designs” even in the most minute creatures in the world. (2) Reading and writing about “Design” is intriguing, for it makes me question if the smallest creatures have intention, and if they do not, then why their destinies are so bleak. (3) Although the poem’s penultimate line is a question- “What but design of darkness to appall?” it really could be a statement for the poem’s context forces the reader to conclude, as William Blake did, that a dark design controls all. Robert Frost makes us ask what William Blake asked about God and the world 100 years earlier: when the world was finished, “Did (God) smile on his work to see?”

-Commentary: : The first sentence (1) of the conclusion returns to topic of the previous body paragraph on connotations and the thesis. The “middle sentence” (2) addresses “why this paper and text matter.” For this essay writer, the paper mattered because it made him ask questions about God and God’s design. Also, notice how the final sentences of the conclusion (3) return to the content and the language of the introduction’s opener. This brings unity to the paper by framing it.

Another example: Below is an introduction and a conclusion to a poetry analysis paper on John Keats’s poem “To Autumn”:

INTRODUCTION:

“To Autumn”: A Focus On The Positive Aspects Of Life

“How beautiful the season is now—How fine the air—A

temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, better

than the chilly green of the Spring. Somehow a stubble-plain

looks warm—in the same way that some pictures look warm—

This struck me so much in my Sunday’s walk that I composed upon it.”

(Keats, letter to Reynolds)

This excerpt is from a letter poet John Keats wrote on September 22, 1819 to his friend Reynolds. The beauty of a peaceful autumn day moved him to write a poem entitled “To Autumn.” Although autumn is typically seen as a season of demise, closure, and loss, Keats instead portrays a beautiful scene of the splendor, brilliance, and ripeness which autumn brings. However, by using subtle, quiet hints in his language he causes the reader to subconsciously focus on the negative aspects of autumn and life in general. This leads the reader to come to the conclusion that they need to focus on more positive features of a scene or of life in order to see beauty, harmony, and divinity in everything. By reviewing the speaker’s commentary on early, mid, and late fall in “To Autumn,” John Keats philosophy on the need for optimism will be developed.

….

CONCLUSION:

(1) Clearly, John Keats finds beauty in late fall even as winter begins to take hold. Instead of seeing a harvested field in late fall as full of loss and decay and as the onset of a long, brutal winter, Keats maintains his original, Wordsworth would say “spontaneous,” emotional reaction to the warm beauty of the sun reflecting on cut grain. Throughout “To Autumn” John Keats is constantly taking control of the reader’s mind by hinting at the presence of death and decay along with the beauty of late fall. (2) Although there may be sadness and death amidst the beauty and splendor of autumn, it is essential to focus on the positive aspects of this season in order to appreciate its beauty. In order to find true happiness one cannot solely focus on the negative features, but must instead be optimistic, and have a panoptic view of the world and life in general. (3) Through this panoptic lens “a stubble plain” of reaped grain with the “rosy hue” of the setting sun flaring upon the truncated stems will “look warm” and there will be the illusion that “warm days will never cease.”

What makes this conclusion work?

It is unified, coherent, and natural.

-(1) The opening two sentences of the conclusion return the the reader to the previous body paragraph and the opener of the paper.

- (2) The “middles sentences” develop both the central message of the paper and a personal reaction to the value of this message.

- (3) The final sentences return us to both the phrases of the opener and the poem. This unifies both the the paper as a whole. This ender leave the essay reader with something to ponder and discuss.