Can a thesis statement be an if-then statement?

I think so, but it would really help if I had an example.

I need to write a thesis statement about the Great Gatsby. If daisy represents the American Dream, what is Fitzgerald saying about 1920’s society? If you haven’t read this then it probably won’t help, but that’s what I need to write about

I would ask your advisor.

@jballzz Needs to be a statement. So – If Daisy represents the American Dream, then American society in the 1920s is…

It can be an if-then statement, but I don’t think as a question. Your thesis would be a one-line answer to your question.

Conditional (that is, “if-then”) statements can make for great thesis statements. Some of the most famous arguments in philosophy, for instance, are conditional arguments explaining the logical consequences of particular beliefs (thus simultaneously demonstrating why debates over the antecedent—the “if” part—are relevant). Given the different schools of literary analysis, and the general indeterminacy of the subject, a conditional thesis seems just as well suited for your topic. But as has been said, your thesis statement cannot be a question. To state the obvious, it must be a thesis—and theses are assertions.

I agree with @MyNewtBoobs (for some reason I recall this being used as an example in college, but I’m not sure why)

Your thesis statement should sum up the position you are going to argue throughout your essay/paper/thesis and this claim should be supported by appropriate scholarly evidence. This is quite a good article on writing a thesis statement. The Purdue people usually have good stuff too but I can’t access their page on thesis statements. So, it could be an “if blah blah .. then ..” statement as long as you can support this claim through your discussion.

http://jerz.setonhill.edu/writing/academic/thesis.htm

As @MyNewtBoobs and @Mz_Lizzy have said, pretty much, a thesis statement is a statement, first and foremost. It really shouldn’t be an if/then “statement.” It’s just a matter of wording it and writing it properly. The thesis statement “states” what you are going to argue in your essay or paper. An if/when is vague at best. You need to take a position and argue it. As in “F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the character of Daisy to represent the American dream” and then you go on to argue, to demonstrate, that Fitzgerald does use Daisy to represent the American dream. Or you say something like “F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the character of Daisy to explore and critique the realities of the American dream in 1920’s society. Something like that. Again, you need to take a position and argue it. No if/thens.

@lillycoyote Maybe an if/then isn’t really the best for a Great Gatsby essay, but in a larger sense, they can be the strongest – especially in science, but even outside of science it can be a way of saying that you are making a very narrow, pointed claim instead of a broad (and thus usually so wide it’s impossible to be correct) claim.

@lillycoyote My guess is that @jballzz doesn’t want to spend too much time defending the claim that Daisy represents the American dream and is instead interested in showing what would follow from such an interpretation. Now, @jballzz would still need to give some textual support for why it is not unreasonable to interpret Daisy in this way, but the conditional argument precludes the need to rule out other interpretations as unreasonable. This seems to make particularly good sense for a literature essay insofar as there is no real justification for saying that there can only be one correct interpretation of a literary work. Indeed, it seems to be a merit of critical theory that it acknowledges the multiplicity of lenses through which any text may be read.

@MyNewtBoobs There’s no crying in baseball and there are no essays in science, unless you went to college where I did and they had “math for poets” to fulfill the science/math requirement for liberal arts majors. And @SavoirFaire whether or not @jballzz wants to spend very much time defending the claim that Daisy represents the American dream it depends on what the assignment is. The issue is not what the correct interpretation of a literary work is, the question is what a thesis statement is. You make your statement; you defend it. That’s that. You can read the text through any lens you want, you just have to pick a lens and stick with it, and argue it. That is the purpose of a thesis statement, if I remember correctly, and it’s been a while. so correct me if I’m wrong.

@lillycoyote No, but science has research papers that have theses.

They do (scientists write research papers with thesis statements) and I think whether an if/then statement would work, would depend on how the writer phrases the final statement. It could be a very definite and arguable statement. It really comes down to the final wording. I certainly wouldn’t like to give a blanket no.

@MyNewtBoobs Yes, of course they do, but not in the same way. Writing about science is intrinsically different that writing about The Great Gatsby.

@lillycoyote And I don’t disagree with that. I just think that both can utilize an if/than thesis if done properly.

@lillycoyote I don’t deny that the specifics of the assignment could change whether or not it is legitimate to not argue for the thesis that Daisy represents the American dream. What I am arguing is that conditional statements can make perfectly good thesis statements.

If I want to write an essay giving a Freudian analysis of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” I don’t have to begin with a defense of Freudian analysis. It’s just one way to read literature. What I need textual support for are the specific claims that I think that lens brings out (e.g., “Roderick and Madeline are in an incestuous relationship”). But my thesis statement here is something like “a Freudian analysis reads Roderick and Madeline as being in an incestuous relationship.” This could be construed as a conditional thesis as follows: “if we limit ourselves to a particular analysis—viz., a Freudian one—then Roderick and Madeline are to be read as being in an incestuous relationship.”

Similarly, I think “Daisy represents the American dream” is the lens in this case. Just like in the above case, then, it is not strictly necessary to defend the statement “Daisy represents the American dream” in order for “if Daisy represents the American dream, then Fitzgerald is saying __________ about American society in the 20s” to be a legitimate thesis. Maybe @jballzz‘s teacher would not allow it for this particular assignment, but conditional statements are not illegitimate as thesis statements per se.