The Warrior Hero: Help with a thesis statement

I always find that formulating a thesis statement is the most difficult task when I begin to write. Right now, I have one that I'm not sure is strong enough or even on topic. Anyway, this is our topic:

The Warrior Hero (Discuss both parts of this topic)

1. The Greek Hero: Use Homer's Illiad to describe an ideal hero to the Greeks.
Pick one like Achilles and Hekter as the model. Use a couple of scenes or several lines of dialogue to discuss what a hero should look like to the audience.

2. Choose a modern military hero from literature or film that could compare to the Greek warrior hero. Use a modern audience to react to each version of a military hero. What is idealized and why? What has changed that makes someone a warrior hero? Choose an audience that would reject the military hero for society.

This is my working thesis: Homer's epic play and literature, The Iliad, has set the precedence for warrior heroes throughout the century and even now the ideals of the Greeks heroes are depicted in many war movies, such as, Saving Private Ryan.

Yeah, it's not that great, but hopefully someone can help! Thanks a bunch.

Good morning!

OK--thesis statements are tricky, because you are asked to sum up your entire paper before you write it. I've always found this a catch-22; how am I supposed to tell a reader what it's about when I haven't written it yet?!?! Anyway, it looks like you've got a good brainstorming session started here. Just as an off-topic question, have you seen "300"? If not, it may be something useful for this paper. I think the thesis is a good one; which character(s) from the Iliad are you thinking about using? Which one do you understand or relate to the easiest?
Try and create a working outline for the paper, and then we can come back to the thesis statement; at this point everything is flexible, so once we have an idea about what you want to have in your content, we can do the quick outline and then the thesis will come easier and stronger.

Regards,
Gloria
Moderator, EssayForum.com