Writing the Introduction

to an essay about something you have read

GENERAL ADVICE: Remember to do this in your essay's introduction if you are writing about something you have read:

ü name the author

ü name the work

ü add a brief summary of the content

ü build a bridge to your thesis (a transition)

ü state your thesis at the end of the introduction

Here's an example:

Let's pretend this is our assignment:

Directions: In a short essay, apply our course theme of "From Chaos, What Patterns Emerge?" to Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

Please consider the entire novel when extracting and developing your examples of chaos and the social patterns that emerge.

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Now let's assume we want to use Simon, one of the characters in the novel, as an example of 'patterns emerging from chaos. '

This would be an example of an opening paragraph:

William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies tells the story of a group of World War II-era British boys who crash-land on an uninhabited island and attempt to survive until rescue. The physical island is a paradise, complete with blue lagoons and plentiful food, almost an Eden. However, without an adult survivor to provide social control and direction, social chaos is immediately present. Because of this chaos, as the days pass some of the boys begin to exhibit social patterns far different from those that their society was designed to teach them. An excellent example of patterns emerging from the chaos is the character Simon.