Introductions

1. Introductions

2. A successful introduction… • Captures the reader’s interest • Communicates the topic and purpose • Sets the tone for the essay • Builds toward the thesis statement.

3. Strategies for Introductions • Lively Description • Question • Quotation • Startling Statements • Dialogue • Engaging story • Come up with an angle that none of your readers have seen before.

4. Sample - Question What would you expect to be the personality of a man who has his wife sent away to a convent (or perhaps has had her murdered) because she took too much pleasure in the sunset and in a compliment paid to her by another man? It is just such a man – a Renaissance duke -- that Robert Browning portrays in his poem “My Last Duchess.” Through what he says about himself, through his actions, and through his interpretation of earlier incidents, the Duke reveals the arrogance, jealousy, and materialism that are his most conspicuous traits.

5. Sample - Quote “The year was 2081, and everyone was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way” (34). Yet, it is really possible for everyone to truly be equal? Equal in what ways? Wealth? Beauty? Intelligence? And at what cost? In “Harrison Bergeron” Kurt Vonnegut uses handicaps to point out how achieving equality is really unrealistic.

6. Sample - summary Richard Connell creates a situation in which a famous hunter becomes another man's prey in his short story "The Most Dangerous Game.“ When Rainsford finds himself marooned on Ship-Trap Island, he discovers that the owner of the island hunts men, instead of animals, as a hobby.  Rainsford must outsmart his opponent in order to stay alive, and so, experiences all the fears that an animal feels when it's hunted.  By putting a hunter in the role of the prey, Richard Connell demonstrates the sport and cruelty of hunting.

7. Sample – description Alberto Alvaro Rios’s short story “The Secret Lion” presents a twelve-year-old boy’s view of growing up -- everything changes. As the narrator tells us, when the magician pulls a tablecloth out from under a pile of dishes, children are amazed at the “stay-the-same part,” while adults focus only on the tablecloth itself (42). Adults have the benefit of experience and know the trick will work as long as the technique is correct. When we “grow up” we gain this experience and knowledge, but we lose our innocence and sense of wonder. In other words, the price we pay for growing up is a permanent sense of loss. This tradeoff is central to “The Secret Lion.” The key symbols in the story reinforce its main theme: change is inevitable and always accompanied by a sense of loss.