Friday, October 22, 2010

Thesis refinement and evidence

My thesis is something like this:

"A community's best interest is handicapped by the powerful individuals who...."


I'm also having some trouble finding relevant evidence. Here is some of my evidence so far:
  • Agamemnon refusing to give up Chryseis, resulting in a 10-day plague on his army (roughly pages 79-82)
  • Paris' failure to defeat Menelaus (pages 130-140)
  • Achilles refusal to eat with his troops, distancing himself from them. (pages 499-500)
  • Achilles not helping the Greeks because of argument with Agamemnon (speech on 261-266)

I was also wondering if it would be good to talk about what makes a community strong, like when the Argives are separated into different tribes, and the rituals they have (like feasting). Though I'm not surehow well this helps prove what I'm trying to say.

1 comment:

Ms.D. said...

I think that if you write an inductive essay (A+B+C instead of A+A+A) then it makes a lot of sense to talk about what it is that makes a community strong, because then your reader can more clearly see how the powerful individuals are not working for this.

As for other evidence - can you use humans who are connected to gods and look at the way in which the gods do not really serve the human community?