Essay Writing: How to Write an Introduction

An introduction typically opens with several sentences that get the reader’s attention and concludes with the thesis. The opening sentences should set up the thesis. Here is an example of an introduction (the thesis is italicized):

After learning that Claudius murdered the king, Hamlet vows to “sweep” to his “revenge” “with wings as swift / As meditation” (i.v.29-31). However, he delays when given the opportunity to make good on his promise. Through the ages various theories have been proposed to explain his hesitancy. The Romantic interpretation, made famous by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is that Hamlet’s tendency to think too much renders him incapable of making a decision and thus incapable of acting. The psychoanalytic interpretation, first proposed by Freud, is that Hamlet, suffering from the Oedipus complex, hesitates to exact vengeance because he identifies with Claudius, who has acted out Hamlet’s secret desire to kill his father and sleep with his mother. These and other theories have led to innumerable books of criticism, but they fail to recognize the true source of Hamlet’s hesitancy: within the world of the play, Shakespeare depicted the issues and concerns of the Renaissance, which was characterized by the uneasy cohabitation of classicism and Christianity. Hamlet delays because he is torn between the active, Greco-Roman heroism epitomized by Achilles and the passive, Christian heroism epitomized by Jesus.

The above introduction sets up the thesis by presenting an overview of alternative critical interpretations, interpretations which the thesis pushes against. When writing the sentences preceding the thesis, I hoped that a brief look at the Romantic and psychoanalytic interpretations would interest the reader. However, your introduction’s pre-thesis sentences can hook the reader in many other ways – for instance, by using or including one of the following:

• a quotation
• a surprising statistic or a striking fact
• a vivid example
• a description
• an anecdote
• an analogy
• some dialogue
• a paradoxical statement
• a question
• a joke

While the thesis usually comes at the end of the introduction, it can appear at the beginning. At one of the private schools where I taught English, a history teacher insisted that his students’ introductions begin with the thesis. It is also worth noting that thesis-first introductions are sometimes preferred in work settings. Let’s say the CEO of a company has asked her facilities manager to submit a report about whether providing more natural light in the workplace would be a worthwhile investment. The manager’s thesis-first introduction might read like this (the thesis is italicized):

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Ensuring that our workplace receives sufficient natural light would benefit our company in a number of ways. Our employees would be happier, healthier and more productive; healthier and more productive employees would lower the company’s health-insurance and payroll expenses by 25%; and our annual energy bill would see a 18% reduction.

Notice how short this introduction is. Such brevity is not uncommon in work settings.