Essay help needed with organizing a response to a thesis statement

I need essay help with how to organize a essay response from a thesis statement. The thesis statement is from West Side Story and we only watched the movie. The thesis is "Tony is a gallant character that wants a better life for himself and others." How do I begin?

Linda responds:

I can see why you need essay help. The thesis statement you have is not a working thesis but more of a finished paper thesis. The way it is written does not make clear what the main idea of the essay is to be.

You may want to check the characteristics of a good working thesis and an even better working thesis so you understand how to word a thesis so it will help you plan your essay. However, if your instructor gave you this awful thesis to use, you are stuck with it.

The thesis statement lends itself to two different ways of organizing the essay, depending on how you interpret the statement.

1) You could read the statement as if the main idea is a three-part description of Tony. Then your outline for your body paragraphs would look like this:

Tony is a gallant character.
Tony wants a better life for himself.
Tony wants a better life for others.

2) Alternatively, you could read the statement as if the main idea is “Tony is a gallant character” and his wanting a better life for himself and others as illustrations of how his gallantry expresses itself.

If you think that's what the thesis is supposed to be about, then you end up with an outline for the body paragraphs that looks like this:

Tony is a gallant character.
Tony's gallantry expresses itself in a desire for a better life for himself.
Tony's gallantry expresses itself in a desire for a better life for others.

In either case, you have to write a definition of what it means to be gallant. Again, you're in a bit of a pickle, because the term gallant has more than one common definition; readers' impressions of Tony could be very different depending on which definition you choose to use as your starting point.

It may not look as if there is much difference between the two outlines, but they would require quite different treatment. The first outline does not require you to establish a link between Tony's gallant character and his desire for a better life for himself and others. The second outline requires you to show that link.

One other note: The phrasing of the thesis contains a usage flaw that would irritate many educated people. The word that is used to refer to inanimate objects. Tony is a person. The phrasing you need is "Tony is a gallant character who wants a better life for himself and others."