Lesson Objectives:
1. Learn the fundamental commonalities of Introductions and Conclusions for English papers
2. Collectively apply the Introduction and Conclusion principles to a student paper
3. Individually practice editing for the principles of introductions and conclusions on student papers
THE WRITING GUIDE
25. Develop an opener:
directives,
quotations,
short narratives
that open an essay and allow your reader to become excited about the topic of your essay.
commands that ask the reader to think about how their own lives connect to the subject matter of the essay. They are also commands given by the writer to the reader to provoke thought.
For example, in an essay on Henry Thoreau’s Walden an excellent directive grabber would be:
“Think about how much more contemplative, introspective, and philosophical we would be if we relinquished all of our artificial means of entertainment and lived closer to nature. Imagine life without computers, , televisions, and smart phones. Such was the life of Henry David Thoreau and the fruit of this lifestyle became the famous autobiographical, narrative book Walden.”
-Here the writer has made the reader become engaged with the topic by addressing the reader’s life and asking for a personal reaction before the thesis and the analysis are developed.
“I have always been regretting that I am not as wise as the day as I was born.” (Thoreau 34)
This excerpt from Henry Thoreau’s Walden is central to the purpose of the book. Thoreau wants to return to a state of innocence by going to nature and simplifying his life. He wants to convince the reader that our childhood fascination with nature should not be lost in the meaningless details of adult life.
-Here the writer has made the reader become engaged with the topic by quoting from the book and developing a central theme in the book before we encounter a thesis or a plan of attack in the introduction.
quick, personal accounts from your life that help you and your reader connect to the subject matter of the essay. This brings an intimate feel to the essay and shows the reader how invested you are in the subject matter of the essay.
For example, in an essay on Henry Thoreau’s Walden an excellent short narrative to begin the essay would be:
When I was a young boy I would go to my local creek, Squaw Valley Creek, and fish all day long. I would roll cheese onto a hook and dangle a line over my favorite bank. I did not use a reel. I would catch little “trout” and fill my yellow bucket with as many as I could. I loved the fish and the creek so much that I brought them home in the bucket and hoped to create my own aquarium. Well, the fish died, and my room stank. In response to my mother’s questions about my “foolish aquarium,” I said, “I just want to be with the creek all the time.” Well, this is what Henry Thoreau realized about his life in his book Walden. Thoreau could not stand being separated from his beloved nature, so he moved to Walden Pond and stayed for two years, two months, and two days.
-Here the writer has made the reader become engaged with the topic by developing a short narrative that shows why the writer is so personally connected to the themes in Walden.
26. Create a Bridge Sentence:
sentences that occur after the grabber / opener and lead the reader into the thesis. They provide a bridge from your directive, quote, rhetorical question, short narrative grabber / opener to the thesis. They usually fill in background information about the author, text, and subject matter.
For example: in the introductory paragraph below, the writer has employed quotations for an opener. (linking sentences are in bold)
“Native”: related to one as in connection with, the place of one’s birth or origin; Occurring in a pure state in nature and not refined, adorned, or altered by man. (Webster 902)
“Intelligence”: the ability to learn or understand from experience; ability to acquire and retain knowledge- any degree of keenness of mind, cleverness, shrewdness, etc. (Webster 702)
“Native Intelligence”: “develops through an unspoken or soft- spoken relationship with theses interwoven things; it evolves as the native involves himself in his region.” (Duncan 53)
David James Duncan’s novel The River Why develops the idea of being a native, of being intelligent, and of possessing native intelligence. Duncan argues that “the ability to acquire or retain knowledge” cannot be achieved unless one is “present in a place of one’s origin, unaltered by man.” This develops my belief that Gus’s journey toward adulthood involves his honing of intelligence as he involves himself in the natural and social environments of his world. According to the author native intelligence that combines academic, emotional, spiritual, and environmental acumen. Although Gus, the protagonist, begins the novel as a naive fisherman, he continues to develop into a native throughout the novel. Gus shows his progress to becoming a native through developing an understanding of spirituality, love, and death.
BRIDGE SENTENCE STARTERS:
FOR NARRATIVES:
-The point of this short narrative is ____________________________________.
-In the passage above, the author expresses the idea that ____________________________. This develops my belief that ___________________________.
-I ask you to consider this situation because ____________________________________.
-It is important to connect to this idea because ____________________________________.
29. Embed your thesis within your plan of attack:
Thesis: a sentence or series of sentences with a subject and an opinion. It should be stated close to the end of the introductory paragraph, and can be written in the same sentence as the plan of attack. A thesis cannot be self-evident and must express an opinion or interpretation that must be proven by textual evidence and analysis of this textual evidence in the essay.
Plan of Attack (P.O.A.) or Roadmap: a sentence that tells the reader how the essay will set out to prove or develop your thesis. It occurs in the introductory paragraph and can be written in the same sentence as the thesis.
It is usually a three-pronged attack because each topic (prong) will introduce the topic of a paragraph in a five-paragraph essay. In this type of essay there are three body paragraphs and the plan of attack introduces the topic of each paragraph.
Thesis example:
“The speaker in Robert Frost’s poem “Design” questions the intention of the creator and concludes that the world is a manifestation of the creator’s evil plan.”
-This is a viable thesis that is not self-evident and that will have to be proven through close textual analysis of the poem in the body paragraphs of the essay.
Example of a thesis with an embedded plan of attack:
“Wilderness needs to be preserved because of its recreational, spiritual, and intrinsic value.”
-the thesis is “wilderness needs to be preserved”
-the embedded (and parallel) plan of attack indicates that three body paragraphs will explore the recreational, spiritual, and intrinsic values of wilderness and how they contribute to the compelling need to preserve wilderness.
Example of a poetry analysis paper plan of attack embedded in the same sentence as the thesis:
“By exploring the violent imagery of the spider and the moth, the multiple, depressing questions evoked by these images, and the multiple, dark connotations in Robert Frost’s poem “Design”, the speaker’s disillusionment with the evil intentions of the creator will be developed.”
-Commentary: From this Plan of Attack (P.O.A)., we know the three body paragraphs will address violent imagery, depressing questions, and dark connotations, respectively.
-Notice how the P.O.A. avoids using the first person “I.”
-Also, notice that the plan of attack does not employ the ‘forced’ syntax of: “This essay will first...”
-A complex sentence with the three pronged plan of attack in the introductory phrase or clause and thesis stated in the independent clause is an excellent way to combine the thesis and plan of attack seamlessly.
THESIS WITH EMBEDDED PLAN OF ATTACK STARTERS:
-By reviewing the passages on ________________, _________________, and _______________, this paper will contend that __________________________ .
-By exploring the ______,___________, and ____________ in (author’s full name)’s (text name), ____________________________________.
-_______________________________________________ will be developed by exploring the passages when_________,__________, and ___________________.
SAMPLE STUDENT PAPER:
By exploring Gus’s evolving views on love, mortality, and spirituality, we become witness to Gus’s ability to develop a mature understanding of relationships, why humans are conscious of their mortality and how to sustain faith in a higher, benevolent power.
In this part of the Novel Gus is still very immature and very strongly in the mindset of an adolescent. All he wants is to fish which would (in his opinion) lead him to happiness. His life is only focused on himself. He does feels very out of place and was even voted most out of it in high school. He has not even left home, but he is still planning out his ‘perfect’ life for when he leaves. Gus shows how enveloped he is with self love when he says, “But at nineteen I believed that Not- Fishing was the Bad, Fishing was the Good, everything else under the sun and moon was the Indifferent, and ‘too much of the good’ was inconceivable.” (Duncan The River Why 57). Gus is saying all he wants in his life is to fish. He wants to spend 14 hours in a day fishing and he wants to spend as little time as possible doing other things he thinks are not necessary such as eating, sleeping and going to the bathroom. When Duncan says “But at nineteen I believed…” you can see that Duncan is saying that he is very immature by stating his belief of consent fishing was only just that, a belief. Gus still doesn’t understand that just loving himself won't fulfill him and that too much of a good thing is bad. Aldo Leopold expresses a similar idea of how other things (such as the environment) need to become self love when he says, “education actually in progress makes no mention of obligation to land over and above those dictated by self-interest.” (Leopold Contesting The Used of Nature 184). Here Leopold is saying that when one puts education (or self interest) above other things (The environment) then their priorities are not straight and self interest should never be put first. Gus must learn the same thing that Leopold is expressing. He needs to learn to put self love last and that his path is life is going to lead him to misery. He needs grasp that loving others will lead him to happiness, whereas right now he thinks just loving himself will make him happy.
We see that as Gus becomes older and starts to discover himself he learns to love more than himself. He realizes this when he finds a dead body in the river by his house. When he finds this dead body (Anvil Abe) he notices that Anvil Abe is just like him. He was just a fishermen, but the difference was that Anvil Abe has a wedding ring. When Gus sees this he realizes that if this has been him he would have no one that would miss him. He has no girlfriend or wife and he had left his parents. He realizes that he needs to start loving in order to be loved. Gus begins to expand his life beyond fishing. He meets his neighbors and becomes a mentor to some young kids. He has started to focus less of himself and more on others. He meets a girl named Eddy when he goes to a river. The strange thing about him going to this river as that he went there to not fish (the thing he loves) but to just swim and enjoy life. At this river he spots a girl. He says, “But to live without ever seeing the beautiful fisher-girl again...and there was no better name for what shone there now than Love.” (Duncan The River Why 161, 274). Gus can not imagine his life without seeing Eddy again. He can not continue his life with just self love. He has began to love her. You see this when he says, “and there was no better name for what shone there now than Love.” You can see he is expanding his love to beyond himself. He has learned that love for other will fulfill him, where as self-love cannot. He has learned to love.
The incident with Anvil Abe didn’t just make Gus start thinking about learning to love other, it also made him start thinking about Mortality. Gus realized he had a complete fear of death and none of his family members theories of death seemed plausible to him. He doesn’t see much reason to have a worth life when it means nothing. You can see that Gus doesn’t have any hope for after he dies when he says, “I was nothing-a random configuration of molecules...all I knew was nothing, all I did meant nothing.” (Duncan The River Why 112). Gus doesn’t think his life has meaning. When he realized Anvil Abe could have been him he realizes not only he needs to love others but also that he has a completer fear of death and to him nothing happens after life. This makes Gus feel like his life has no meaning. You can see he feels this way when he says, “all I did meant nothing.” He sees no meaning to his life. Gus is very immature with his views on mortality. I have had a similar experience as Gus with a fear of death. Without having any theory for death I have thought about the fact that if nothing happens when you die why does one's life matter? I have thought about the fact that I don’t need to make a mark on the world if I wont be anyplace after my life to make all that work worth it. Like Gus I need to keep finding concepts to what happens after I die until he finds one that works for me. I have to experience something close to what Gus experienced in order to relieve my fear of death and live my life to my maximum potential. Gus needs to find a way to not fear death so he can learn how to live his life.
Gus becomes more mature in with his fear of death when Gus remembers a story Bill Bob told him about an afterlife. Bill Bob told Gus a story of how your shadow is actually your twin and that in life if you do the right things in your life you don’t ever day you just go into this Garden World (Bill Bobs version of an afterlife). You can see that Gus’s fear of the afterlife is assuaged when he says, “But if we learn the right things and they learn the right things, then finally we get to be each other’s friend and go back and forth to both worlds wide awake forever...And at once there came a vision of Abe the drowned Fisherman..and when at last he stood free and upon that wide meadow he smiled.” (Duncan The River Why 119,127). This is talking about how if you have a worthwhile life you get to have an afterlife and live forever. This gets rid of Gus’s fear of death and the nightmares about the death of Anvil Abe end with a happy dream of him entering the garden world and smiling. This story can not only gotten rid of Gus’s fear of death but it has also given him a reason to live. Gus develops a reason to have a good life when he says, “But if we learn the right things and they learn the right things, then finally we get to be each other’s friend and go back and forth to both worlds wide awake forever.” Gus’s fear of death has dissipated and now he can start to live his life with meaning and purpose.
Gus’s fear of death didn’t just start from Anvil Abes death, but also his lack of religion or spirituality. At this point in the novel just is still in a very adolescent state. He hasn’t discovered himself yet and still doesn’t know where his life is going. He is very upset with the book The Compleat Angler because fishing has never brought him closer to religion. Gus wants to be religious but he hasn't discovered himself yet. We see how how immature he with religion when he says, “Who was this “God of nature”? Why hadn't I met him...But he never told me nothing...He decides and what could I do about it? Just keep fishing. That’s all. ” (Duncan The River Why 37,44). Gus doesn’t understand that why if God made all these amazing things why doesn’t show himself and take credit for it. Gus also doesn’t understand that if God was supposedly everywhere why hadn’t he met Him. Gus says, “Who was this “God of Nature”? Why hadn’t I met him?” Gus decides that if God isn’t going to show himself he is not going to even try to find some way to be spiritual and he is just going to keep fishing. Gus has to realize that the way to find God is within himself and that the fact that there are all these amazing things is the proof that there is a God. Gus needs to look inside himself to find God.
Gus finally realizes that he had been trying to force religion upon himself and the true way to find religion is to look within himself. Gus is in search of God and is hopelessly trying to force spirituality upon himself. He hikes up to to base of Tamanawis river thinking it will just suddenly make him religious. Gus finally finds religion and he says, “I’d been trying to make a church out of the source of the Tamanawis… I remembered the Tillamook elder’s saying the source is everywhere...I left off searching for spirits...so the river running past my cabin literally did have its source ‘everywhere’. ” (Duncan The River Why 246, 247). Gus is finally realizing that he was trying to make the source of this river his church. He figures out the way to find religion is to discover it within yourself. Not only is Gus showing his new mature self spirituality but he is introducing spirituality to his ‘old self’ that believed god needed to literally show Himself. You see this when he says, “so the river running past my literally did have its source ‘everywhere’.” Not only does Duncan present the idea that the source literally is everywhere in The River Why, but he also expresses this idea in one of his short stories titled “A Door” from his collection titles River Teeth. Duncan tells the story of a river, here is expresses this idea that the source is everywhere. Duncan states, “that was the river that was the creeks that were last year’s snowpack that was last year’s skies…” (Duncan River Teeth 258). Duncan is like Gus in the way that he expresses the idea that the source of the river is everywhere and the source of God and religion is everywhere. Gus has now fully submerged himself into religion and he finally has a higher power to believe in. Gus has finally become mature about religion and has realized the key to finding religion was within himself.
Work Cited
Duncan, David. River Teeth. New York: Banton Books, 1995.
Duncan, David James. The River Why. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1983. Print.
SAMPLE STUDENT OUTLINE:
B. Body Paragraph 1: Non- Native in Love
“But at nineteen I believed that Not- Fishing was the Bad, Fishing was the Good, everything else under the sun and moon was the Indifferent, and ‘too much of the good’ was inconceivable.” (Duncan The River Why 57).
Context-. Voted most out of it in High School. His parents fight over bait and fly fishing- he hates this and just fishes.
Condense- In sum Gus is talking about how the only thing he wants in his life is to fish. That will make him happy and thats all he want to do. He wants to fish 14 hours in a day and do as little as possible as everything else. (Food, sleep, bathroom)
Connect- Therefore, Gus must learn that too much of a good thing is bad and you have to learn to love more then yourself. This shows he has now realized that self love is leading him to misery.
C. Body Paragraph 2: Native in Love
“But to live without ever seeing the beautiful fisher-girl again...and there was no better name for what shone there now than Love.” (Duncan The River Why 161, 274).
Context- Gus has just started fishing less. He has met his neighbors and goes to the river to swim and not fish. He realizes that he is in love with Eddy and that Eddy is his equilibrium. (Define)
Condense- Gus is starting to realize there are other things he can love in life. He has just seen Eddy and has complete lust for him. He can not imagine his life without this love for Eddy.
Connect- He is expanding his love to beyond himself. He learned that he needs something else in his life besides self love. He want/needs to love Eddy.
D. Body Paragraph 3: Non- Native Mortality
“I was nothing-a random configuration of molecules...all I knew was nothing, all I did meant nothing.” (Duncan The River Why 112).
Context- Gus has just seen Anvil Abe and he realizes that if he died he would have no one. At this point he does not see the meaning in life and he has no type of religion or theory of the afterlife.
Condense- Gus feels like his life has no meaning. He thinks his life has no meaning.
Connect- You can see that he feels his life has no meaning. You could see that he has nothing to believe in. Nothing to make him think his life is worth it.
E. Body Paragraph 4: Native Mortality
“But if we learn the right things and they learn the right things, then finally we get to be each other’s friend and go back and forth to both worlds wide awake forever...And at once there came a vision of Abe the drowned Fisherman..and when at last he stood free and upon that wide meadow he smiled.” (Duncan The River Why 119,127).
-more of this quote
-bring in the “learn the right thing...Garden World.”
Context- Gus has just remembered Bill Bob’s story about the Garden Angels. He feared death before this and did not accept any of his families theory on the after life.
Condense- His nightmares about Abe have left him and they were replaced with this dream where Abe is emerging into the garden world and he is happy.
Connect- Gus’s fear for death has dissipated and he can now start to live his life to fullest. He now believes he has a purpose in this world.
F. Body Paragraph 5: Non-Native Spirituality
“Who was this “God of nature”? Why hadn't I met him...But he never told me nothing...He decides and what could I do about it? Just keep fishing. That’s all. ” (Duncan The River Why 37,44).
Context- Gus hasn’t discovered himself yet. He is still very out of place in his life and doesn’t really know where he is going in his life.
Condense- Gus doesn’t understand why if god created all these things why doesn’t he come out and take credit for them. He doesn’t get why he hasn’t met him
Connect-Gus thinks that if god does exist he should show himself so Gus is on the edge of believing. He has no true source of beliefs.
G. Body Paragraph 6: Native Spirituality
“I’d been trying to make a church out of the source of the Tamanawis… I remembered the Tillamook elder’s saying the source is everywhere...I left off searching for spirits...so the river running past my cabin literally did have its source ‘everywhere’. ” (Duncan The River Why 246, 247)
-more of this passage
Context- Gus hiked up to the source of the Tamanawis. He is in search of God. Here he realizes the source is everywhere
Condense- Gus realizes that not only is the source of the river literally everywhere but the source of God is everywhere. All the fish he named off is the proof of god. He no longer had to look for god, God is everywhere.
Connect- Gus has realized God is within himself and it was up to him to find god and not god to find him.
---> mecca is in the mind...do not make a church out of the source
CONCLUSIONS: #s 57-59
57. Return to the topic of previous paragraph:
Conclusion paragraphs often seem needlessly redundant and forced. Conclusions should grow naturally out of the body of the paper and should emphasize the central message of the paper. There are intentional ways to do this.
Framing one’s content is a fundamental commonality of good writing. To frame content writers will “open” the paper with a quotation and return to a phrase or paraphrase of the quotation in the opening and closing lines of the conclusion. This also allows your conclusion to be framed and unified. If a writer “opens” with a short narrative or directive or rhetorical question, then the writer will return to the content of the narrative, directive, or question in the beginning and the end of the conclusion.
For example, below is an introduction and a conclusion to a poetry analysis paper on John Keats’s poem “To Autumn”:
INTRODUCTION:
“How beautiful the season is now—How fine the air—A
temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, better
than the chilly green of the Spring. Somehow a stubble-plain
looks warm—in the same way that some pictures look warm—
This struck me so much in my Sunday’s walk that I composed
upon it.”
(Keats, letter to Reynolds)
This excerpt is from a letter poet John Keats wrote on September 22, 1819 to his friend Reynolds. The beauty of a peaceful autumn day moved him to write a poem entitled “To Autumn.” Although autumn is typically seen as a season of demise, closure, and loss, Keats instead portrays a beautiful scene of the splendor, brilliance, and ripeness which autumn brings. However, by using subtle, quiet hints in his language he causes the reader to subconsciously focus on the negative aspects of autumn and life in general. This leads the reader to come to the conclusion that they need to focus on more positive features of a scene or of life in order to see beauty, harmony, and divinity in everything. By reviewing the speaker’s commentary on early, mid, and late fall in “To Autumn,” John Keats philosophy on the need for optimism will be developed.
….
CONCLUSION:
(1): Instead of seeing a harvested field in late fall as full of loss and decay and as the onset of a long, brutal winter in his final stanza of “To Autumn”, Keats maintains his original, Wordsworth would say “spontaneous,” emotional reaction to the warm beauty of the sun reflecting on cut grain. Throughout “To Autumn” John Keats is constantly taking control of the reader’s mind by hinting at the presence of death and decay along with the beauty of late fall. (2): Reading this poem helps us understand that although there may be sadness and death amidst the beauty and splendor of autumn, it is essential to focus on the positive aspects of this season in order to appreciate its beauty. In order to find true happiness one cannot solely focus on the negative features, but must instead be optimistic, and have a panoptic view of the world and life in general. (3) Through this panoptic lens “a stubble plain” of reaped grain with the “rosy hue” of the setting sun flaring upon the truncated stems will “look warm” and there will be the illusion that “warm days will never cease.”
It is unified, coherent, and natural.
-(1) The opening sentence of the conclusion returns the reader to the previous paragraph and grows to a summary of the paper from there.
- (2) The “middle sentences” develop both the central message of the paper and a personal reaction to the value of this message.
- (3) The final sentences return us to both the phrases of the opener and the poem. This unifies both the conclusion and the paper as a whole. This ender leave the essay reader with something to ponder and discuss.
58. React to the why the text(s) and paper matter to you:
Many students write papers not because they have a burning desire to analyze a text but because they have been assigned by their teachers. But good analytical essay writers will always answer the question: “why does this paper matter?” before writing the paper and after writing the paper. So-why not include why this paper matters in your conclusion in order to be explicit about its meaning to you.
For example, below is an introduction to a fiction analysis paper on David Duncan’s The River Why:
INTRODUCTION:
Native”: related to one as in connection with, the place of one’s birth or origin; Occurring in a pure state in nature and not refined, adorned, or altered by man. (Webster 902)
“Intelligence”: the ability to learn or understand from experience; ability to acquire and retain knowledge- any degree of keenness of mind, cleverness, shrewdness, etc. (Webster 702)
“Native Intelligence”: “develops through an unspoken or soft- spoken relationship with theses interwoven things; it evolves as the native involves himself in his region.” (Duncan 53)
David James Duncan’s novel The River Why develops the idea of being a native, of being intelligent, and of possessing native intelligence. Duncan argues that “the ability to acquire or retain knowledge” cannot be achieved unless one is “present in a place of one’s origin, unaltered by man.” This develops my belief that Gus’s journey toward adulthood involves his honing of intelligence as he involves himself in the natural and social environments of his world. According to the author native intelligence combines academic, emotional, spiritual, and environmental acumen. Although Gus, the protagonist, begins the novel as a naive fisherman, he continues to develop into a native throughout the novel. Gus shows his progress to becoming a native through developing an understanding of the positive and negative aspects of spirituality, love, and death.
CONCLUSION:
(1): As we see from Gus’s understanding that life is short and he must make something of it, “(native intelligence) evolves as the native involves himself in his region.” (Duncan 53) Gus develops from a confused, dispirited adolescent into a faithful, grounded, and purposeful adult through his experiences with spirituality, love, and environmentalism. In short, Gus develops native intelligence. (2): Reading this novel affords an accurate account of a young boy growing up, the problems he encounters, and how he learns from them. As Gus grows and matures from these experiences, Gus teaches us that negative experiences and poor role models are just as formative as positive experiences and positive role models. (3): After this novel and essay, it is hard to see the serendipitous moments of my life as insignificant and disconnected. And I now know that how I see affects what I know and what I know “evolves” as I “involve” myself in my “region.”
Commentary: The first sentence of the conclusion returns to the opener quotation on native intelligence from the introduction. This “frames” the paper and provides a coherence and consistency of purpose. The “middle sentences” review the central message of the paper. And the final sentences address “why this paper matters.” For this essay writer, the paper mattered because it helped him perceive role models and moments in his life differently than he did before reading the novel and writing the paper about the novel. Notice the use of both the first person and the “why this paper matters” starters. Also, notice how the final sentence of the conclusion returns to the content and the language of the quotation form the first sentence of the conclusion. This brings unity to the conclusion itself.
-After reading this novel and writing this essay, I learned that ____________________________.
-By writing about _________________________, I was able to explore the significance of ______________________________.
- Reading and writing about this novel helps one to analyze and understand _________________________________.
-By analyzing the significance of ______________________________,
it reveals the importance of __________________________________.
-In addition to learning how _____________________________ influences an interpretation of (insert text(s)), _________________________ influences how I perceive the world.
59. Enders: return to a phrase or content from the opener:
The conclusion should always end on an emphatic note that brings closure to the essay and leaves the reader thinking about the topic of the last sentence. Whether the opener of the introduction was a quotation, question, directive, or short narrative, returning to a phrase from the opener allows the entire paper to be “framed.” This framing allows the paper to be coherent and unified.
Here is the previous sample conclusion with a thought provoking “ender” that frames the paper:
CONCLUSION:
(1): As we see from Gus’s understanding that life is short and he must make something of it, “(native intelligence) evolves as the native involves himself in his region.” (Duncan 53) Gus develops from a confused, dispirited adolescent into a faithful, grounded, and purposeful adult through his experiences with spirituality, love, and environmentalism. In short, Gus develops native intelligence. (2): Reading this novel affords an accurate account of a young boy growing up, the problems he encounters, and how he learns from them. As Gus grows and matures from these experiences, Gus teaches us that negative experiences and poor role models are just as formative as positive experiences and positive role models. (3): After this novel and essay, it is hard to see the serendipitous moments of my life as insignificant and disconnected. And I now know that how I see affects what I know and what I know “evolves” as I “involve” myself in my “region.”
Commentary: The final sentences of the conclusion return the reader of the paper to the opening definition of “native intelligence.” The point of the essay was to show how Gus evolves an he involves himself in his region and this ender returns us to this definition of native intelligence. And this gets the reader thinking about ways they have or will involve themselves in their communities to evolve their native intelligence.