Writing Your Conclusion Your conclusion is vital to your paper's success. Not only does it create the last impression readers will take with them, but it is the final opportunity for you to re-emphasize the main idea and main points of your paper. It should leave your readers with a sense of closure. GENERAL FORMAT  Stress the Importance of Your Thesis Statement (your main idea): Your conclusion should return to the thesis statement—presenting the same idea that was emphasized in the introduction—but using different words.  Explain the Overall Significance of Your Paper: Leave your readers with a clear understanding of your paper’s overall importance. Your conclusion is an excellent opportunity to emphasize the answer to the question, “So what?” about your paper. Why does this topic matter? What significance does it have beyond this particular paper?  Give the Paper a Sense of Completion: Your conclusion should finalize your ideas and their relationships—not introduce new ones. One way to give a sense of completion is by referring to an element of your introduction. REMEMBER TO AVOID . . .   

Introducing new information or a new topic. Simply mirroring your introduction. Just restating what you have already written.

Sample Conclusion: Thankfully, for the boys on the island, their story ends happily or at least with a sense of hope. Whether or not the boys feel any guilt for the horribly cruel and evil acts they committed on the island remains debatable (Stress importance of Thesis). Golding never reveals how Jack or Roger or the other boys respond to the rescue, choosing instead to close his allegorical novel with a level of uncertainty. What he does show are Ralph and the others crying allowing the reader to make meaning out of these tears. Certainly the boys have lost their innocence for if and when they ever return home, they will never be the same. But guilt can be complicated and an emotion that doesn’t always surface immediately (Explain overall significance). Often it is suppressed, lying dormant until its weight can no longer be carried. Whether the boys are more savage after this experience will never be known, but by leaving this question up to the reader to answer Golding forces the reader to wonder about and examine their own life. We may never be stranded on a desert island, but we will inevitable hurt others throughout our lives. How much guilt do we feel and what we do to make amends for our actions are questions we all must answer for ourselves. (Sense of completion).