A Claim About a Long Text
IntroducedFour hundred pages, one paragraph
- The two components are unchanged: a claim that requires defense with evidence from the text, and the evidence itself.
- What changes is the search space — a novel offers a thousand quotations for any claim you like.
- So the difficulty moves from finding evidence to choosing it.
A novel offers a buffet of quotations; your argument still needs a plate, not the whole table.
In a long text, the difficulty of using evidence moves from finding it to...
A novel offers a thousand quotations for any claim you like.
In combination still means in combination
- Writers identify details that in combination enable a claim.
- In a novel the strongest combination is usually spread: an early detail and a late one.
- Two quotations from the same chapter prove that chapter; two from opposite ends prove the book.
Two quotations from the same chapter are as strong as two from opposite ends of a novel.
Spread evidence shows a pattern; clustered evidence shows a moment.
Quote short from a long text
- The longer the text, the shorter the quotation should be.
- A four-line quotation from a novel makes the reader do your selecting for you.
- Quote the four or five words that carry the claim, and describe the rest.
Is this evidence choice strong for a long text?
Sort each pairing by what it can actually prove.
The longer the text, the ____ the quotation should be.
A four-line quotation makes the reader do your selecting for you.
Two quotations from the same chapter prove that chapter, not the book. In a long text, the strength of a claim comes from evidence that is spread — an early detail and a late one — because that is what shows the pattern rather than the moment.
A claim about a whole novel is...
A paragraph claim is about one character, one relationship, one pattern.
Claim size for a novel
- A claim about a whole novel is a thesis, not a paragraph claim.
- A paragraph claim is about one character, one relationship, one pattern.
- If your claim would need three paragraphs, it belongs in unit 3.7 as a thesis instead.
Select all the questions in the long-text paragraph check.
Fame is not a component of an argument.
A long-text paragraph check
- Could a careful reader who has read the whole book disagree?
- Are my two quotations from different parts of the text?
- Does each quotation contain the words my claim rests on?
Claim: the narrator ranks everyone by occupation. Chapter 2: he calls his cousin "a small clerk of a man." Chapter 31: he introduces his own daughter's husband as "in insurance." Twenty-nine chapters apart — that spread is what makes it a habit rather than a remark.
The components are unchanged — a claim requiring defense plus the evidence. In a long text the difficulty is choosing: take details in combination and spread across the text, quote short, and keep the claim to one character, relationship or pattern rather than the whole book.