Daniel Kies Department of English College of DuPage
Composition English 1101		Contact Form

Functions of the Conclusion

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Your conclusion should neither be a summary nor a mere restatement of your thesis. Instead, it must go beyond the thesis to reach a judgment, to express your approval of one side of an issue, to discuss your findings and their implications, or to offer directives. To put it succinctly, you should say something worthwhile. After all, your readers have stayed with you through several pages; you owe them a concluding statement.

In classical rhetoric, the conclusion served several functions:

1. to inspire the audience with a favorable opinion of ourselves and an unfavorable opinion of our opponents,
2. to amplify the force of the points we have made in the pervious section and to extenuate the force of the points made by the opposition,
3. to rouse the appropriate emotions in the audience, and
4. to restate in a summary way our facts and arguments.

Composers of music, like writers, have several options to bring closure to their work. There exist several devices through which writers (and musicians actually) signal the closure of a piece:

1. Thematic closure
   • return to the beginning
   • end on a key word
   • end with a thematic reversal
2. Formal closure
   • return to an earlier pattern
   • resolve "tension"

To see closure at work, read these final paragraphs from Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1974:

And so we ride on and on, down through Ukiah, and Hopland, and Cloverdale, down into the wine country. The freeway miles seem so easy now. The engine which has carried us halfway through a continent drones on and on in its continuing oblivion to everything but its own internal forces. We pass through Asti and Santa Rosa, and Petaluma and Novato, on the freeway that grows wider and fuller now, swelling with cars and trucks and buses full of people, and soon by the road are houses and boats and the water of the Bay.

Trials never end, of course. Unhappiness and misfortune are bound to occur as long as people live, but there is a feeling now, that was not here before, and is not just on the surface of things, but penetrates all the way through: We've won it. It's going to get better now. You can sort of tell these things.

The formal closure that Pirsig achieves by detailing the last miles of his long motorcycle journey are reflected in the thematic resolution of tension — a resolution that I am sure you can sense even without having read the book. Similarly, J. S. Bach's "Little Fugue in G minor" marries formal closure with a thematic resolution of tension. Listen to how the base and treble play against each other throughout the piece, building a musical tension as they go, only to have resolution at last by a harmonious union of the two voices by repetition of the major musical theme in the end:

A composer of music or letters has several options to signal closure. One needn't simply repeat the thesis; one could consider alternatives.

1. Restate the thesis and reach beyond it with a recommendation, an evaluation, a prediction, or a question. In essence, you must be conclusive; that is, you must present your thesis in its final, most persuasive form. In the introduction you were giving the reader an idea of what was to follow, trying to attract interest. In the conclusion, you have the weight of the essay behind you, and you can state your case succinctly, knowing that the reader has all the information you have provided.
   
   For an example from music, listen to Pachelbel's "Canon in D major," where he builds a simple baseline into a memorable melody by the end of the piece — signaling closure by repetition that has the weight of all that went before.
   
   For an example from writing, these concluding lines from Carl Jung's "Approaching the Unconscious" are an example of how a thesis can be broadened at the end of an essay:

   Our actual knowledge of the unconscious shows that it is a natural phenomenon and that, like Nature itself, it is at least neutral. It contains all aspects of human nature — light and dark, beautiful and ugly, good and evil, profound and silly. The study of individual, as well as of collective, symbolism is an enormous task, and one that has not yet been mastered. But a beginning has been made at last. The early results are encouraging, and they seem to indicate an answer to many so far unanswered questions of present-day mankind. (94)

   Consider another example¹

   Let us face the problem straight on and try to erase it in the best way we can rather than throw up our hands and say that all we can do is help the victims and merely label the abuser a "black sheep." Let us look to the parent or guardian as a victim as well and try, difficult though it may be, to show love, warmth, and concern to these people who too often silently cry out of loneliness, isolation, and alienation. Their violent beating of a child, though we cannot condone it, may be a cry for help. People, whether young or old, rich or poor, healthy or sick, need love and the warmth that family life brings. Unfortunately, those children who lack love fall victims to hostile, aggressive physical abuse and probably, because they cannot give love, grow up to be abusers themselves.

2. Close with an effective quotation. For example,

   Billy Budd, forced to leave the Rights of Man, goes aboard the Bellipotent where law, not morality, is supreme. His death is an image of the crucifixion, but the image is not one of hope. William Braswell best summarizes the mystery of the novel by suggesting that the crucifixion, for Melville, "had long been an image of human life, more suggestive of man's suffering than of man's hope" (146).

3. Return the focus of a literary study to the author. For example,

   By her characterization of Walter, Lorraine Hansberry has raised the black male above the typical stereotype. Walter is not a social problem, a mere victim of matriarchy. Rather, Hansberry creates a character who breaks out of the traditional sociological image that dehumanizes the black male. Creating a character who struggles with his fate and rises above it, Hansberry has elevated the black male. As James Baldwin puts it, "Time has made some changes in the Negro face" (24).

4. Offer a directive or solution. For example,

   The four points above demonstrate a central issue: the troubled parents who were victims in their own right and those who are victimized by circumstances today must be helped to recognize their real potential as human beings. The responsibility falls on all health professionals to provide the necessary treatment. Major cities across the nation and many rural communities are establishing child abuse centers and parental self-help groups. A few of the most successful community involvement programs are the Child Abuse Prevention Center in Toledo, the Johnson County Coalition for Prevention of Child Abuse in Kansas City, and the Council for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect in Seattle. More cities should establish such programs.

5. Compare past to present. For example,

   In the traditional patriarchal family, the child was legal property of the parents. But the idea that children are the property of the parents and, therefore, may receive whatever punishment seems necessary, no longer holds true. Social organizations and governmental agencies now help young victims in their search for preventive measures. Unlike in the past, children today have rights too!

   This is the same device that Mark Twain uses in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, 1885:

   Tom's most well now, and got his bullet around his neck on a watch guard for a watch, and is always seeing what time it is, and so there ain't nothing more to write about, and I am rotten glad of it, because if I'd 'a' knowed what a trouble it was to make a book I wouldn't 'a' tackled it, and ain't a-going to no more. But I reckon I got to light out for the territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.

Connecting the past to the present — the beginning to the end — is another motif frequently used by both writers and composers. Listen to Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14, "The Moonlight Sonata."

What Beethoven is teaching us is that we should never do something in the conclusion that is not anticipated by the work as a whole. In writing, this means never make a claim in your conclusion that is unmentioned or unsupported elsewhere. New material may rarely enter a conclusion, and when it does, it must be closely tied to the whole essay before it. To proclaim suddenly in a conclusion that "the war in Iraq is right" is akin to a non sequitur.

Notes

1. These next five suggestions are from James Lester, Writing Research Papers: A Complete Guide Scott, Foresman and Company. Glenview: Illinois, 1984.

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