The Cunning Man is one of the most discussed antagonists in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, and essays about him often rise or fall on the strength of their thesis. In I Shall Wear Midnight he works less like a conventional villain and more like a spirit that feeds on fear and suspicion. Students who understand that idea can write sophisticated arguments. Students who treat him as a simple monster usually produce theses that cannot carry a full essay.

Because the thesis shapes everything that follows, it deserves its own scoring line rather than being folded into a general idea of focus. A strong thesis tells the reader what the writer believes, hints at the reasons, and can be argued against by a thoughtful opponent. If no reasonable reader could disagree, the sentence is a statement of fact and not a thesis. Teaching students this test makes grading easier for you and revision easier for them.

It also helps to read thesis statements first, before the rest of each essay, as a quick diagnostic of the whole class. You will see immediately which students are summarizing, which are making claims, and which are reaching for deeper ideas. That overview lets you plan targeted minilessons before you even start detailed grading. Many teachers find this single habit saves them time later.

Weak, adequate, and strong thesis examples

A weak thesis might read, "The Cunning Man is a bad character in the book." It is vague, it states the obvious, and it offers no direction for the essay. An adequate thesis might say that the Cunning Man shows how fear can turn a community against someone it should trust. A strong thesis goes further by naming a mechanism, such as arguing that he gains power only because ordinary people already carry suspicion about witches.

• Takes a position that a reasonable reader could dispute
• Names a specific idea, such as fear, prejudice, or blame
• Connects the idea to the Cunning Man's role in the story
• Previews the reasoning without becoming a list of points
• Uses precise language instead of words like "bad" or "interesting"

Feedback that fixes a thesis without rewriting it

The temptation with a weak thesis is to rewrite it for the student, but that removes the learning. A better comment asks a pointed question, such as what specifically makes the Cunning Man dangerous and what the book suggests about why people listen to him. The student then has to produce the sharper claim. This approach takes only a sentence of your time and produces real growth.

For students who have a good idea buried in the second paragraph, point to the sentence and suggest moving it up. Many essays contain the real thesis only after a page of warm-up. A short note saying that your best idea appears here, so start there, is often all it takes. Rubric-based tools such as GraideMind can flag where a thesis appears and whether it meets your criteria, which speeds up this kind of triage.

Making the thesis visible in your rubric

Give the thesis its own row in the rubric, with descriptors that reflect real differences between levels. At the top level, the claim is arguable, specific, and tied to the text. At the middle level, it is clear but general. At the bottom level, it restates the prompt or the plot. Students can see exactly what separates their sentence from the next level up.

Pair the rubric with a brief thesis workshop before drafting, where students write two or three versions and choose the strongest. Peer reading helps, since classmates will quickly tell each other when a sentence does not say anything. By the time essays arrive, thesis quality is usually higher and grading is faster. The effort spent early pays back across the whole unit.

Connecting thesis quality to the whole essay

A well-built thesis makes every other section easier to score, because you can check each body paragraph against it. If a paragraph about the Nac Mac Feegle does not connect to the claim about fear, the structure has a problem that the thesis exposes. Teachers can then comment on relevance rather than only on writing quality. This kind of comment helps students understand why a paragraph feels off even when the sentences are clean.

As you grade, keep a running note of the thesis types you see, because those patterns reveal how students understood the novel. If many theses focus on the Cunning Man as pure evil, a follow-up discussion about how fear spreads through a community can deepen the whole class's reading. Grading then becomes a form of formative assessment instead of an endpoint. That shift is where feedback starts to change instruction.