- The theme is the central idea in the work - whether fiction, poetry, or drama. It is what the
piece of literature says about the life. The theme deals with four general areas of
human experience:
1) the nature of humanity (nature = essential qualities or characteristics)
2) the nature of society
3) the nature of humankind’s relationship to the world
4) the nature of our ethical responsibilities
- The theme is the meaning of the writing: it makes the novel, short story, etc.
important.
- There is a theme only when an author has seriously tried to write about life or to
show some truth about life.
- Stories which are purely for entertainment or escape often have no theme.
B. Searching for the theme may have dangers.
1) The theme is not the same as the subject or topic of writing. The subject is what
the work is about. You can state the subject in a word or phrase. In contrast, the
theme is what the work says about the subject. The theme must be written as a
complete sentence or, sometimes, several sentences.
2) A work’s theme must apply to people outside the work. Remember, the theme is
the piece of literature says about the human condition. Therefore, you must write
theme to include people in general, not just the characters in the story. Stating
theme in a piece of literature means that you go from concrete situations in the
writing to generalizations about people outside the work. In this way, literature
is a type of philosophy - a universal wisdom about what reality is.
3) Many works have more than one theme.
4) Some works may not have a theme. There may be so many contradictory or
incompletely developed ideas in a piece of writing that it is impossible to say for sure
what it means.
5) The subjects and themes of complex writing can’t always be covered completely.
Even when the author says what the work means, you cannot say there are no other
possibilities. To get at a work’s theme, you must look for patterns in the world that
the author creates. You must guess what is meant. But you can’t always see
everything at once or see all the patterns that are possible. The best you
can do is to support your interpretations as logically and with as much evidence as you
can. You may disagree with the author’s conclusions - with his or her theme. But,
your job is to identify and understand the work’s theme and then, if you are writing
about it, to represent it fairly. To do this is not necessarily to agree with it. You are
always free to disagree with an author’s views.
6) Theme may be a presentation of a problem rather than a moral or message that
neatly solves the problem. The author may not be offering an answer to a problem.
Often an author simply wants to give a greater awareness or understanding of life,
not comment on it.
C. Remember:
1) The theme must be stated in a complete sentence or sentences.
2) Do not use characters’ names.
3) The theme is a generalization about life.
4) Do not overstate the theme. (Use words like ’some, sometimes, may’ rather than
‘every, all, always.’)
5) The theme can be stated in more than one way.
Questions about theme
A. The key questions for finding a work’s theme are:
1) What is the subject (that is, what is the work about)?
2) What is the theme (that is, what does the work say about the subject)?
3) In what direct and indirect ways does the work show its theme?
B. Remember that the theme deals with four areas of human experience.
1) One strategy for discovering the theme is to ask questions about these areas:
a) What image of people is shown?
- From the way the author presents the characters, can you tell if the author
thinks people in general are bad, or does the author show people as having
good qualities?
- If people are good, what good things do they do?
- If they are bad, how and to what extent are they bad?
b) Does the author show a particular society or social scheme as making life better
or worse?
- Are the characters we care about in conflict with their society?
- Do they escape from it?
- Are they trapped by it?
- Do they finally find a secure place in it without sacrificing their dignity or values?
- What causes and keeps this society going?
- Revolutionary upheavals?
- Good people trying to do right?
- Blind tradition?
c) What control over their lives do the characters have?
- Do they make choices in complete freedom?
- Are they driven by forces beyond their control?
- What controls them?
- Are they aware of these controlling forces?
- Does fate or some grand scheme control history, or is history simply random
and arbitrary?
d) What are the moral conflicts in the work?
- Is it clear to us exactly what is right and exactly what is wrong?
- When moral conflicts are ambiguous in a work, right often opposes right, not wrong.
- What are the rights in opposition to one another?
- Does right win in the end?
- To what extent are characters to blame for their actions? (Presumably, persons
who have no free choice, who are driven by forces beyond their control,
cannot be blamed for their actions.)
- Do ethical decisions emerge from situations or do they come from preconceived
notions of right and wrong (from the Bible, for example, or from cultural tradition)?
- Is one set of moral values in opposition to another?
2. Another strategy for discovering a work’s theme is to answer this question: Who
serves as ‘moral center’ of the work?
a) The moral center is the one person whom the author gives the right action and
right thought (that is, what the author thinks is right action and right thought),
The one character who is clearly ‘good’ and who often serves to judge other
characters.
- Not every work has a moral center; but, in works that do, this center can lead
you to some of the work’s themes.
- When identifying a work’s moral center, answer questions such as these:
- What does the author do to identify this person as the moral center? (Part of
your argument may be simply to show that a character is indeed the moral center.)
- What values does the moral center embody?
- Is the moral center flawed in any way that might diminish his or her authority?
- What effect does the moral center have on the other character and on us?
- If a work does not have a moral center, why not? What do we gain or lose
from not having one?
3) Thinking on paper about theme
- List the subject or subjects of the work. For each subject, state a theme. Put a
check next to the ones that seem most important.
- Explain how the title, subtitle, and names of characters may be related to theme.
- Describe the author’s attitude toward human behaviour.
- Describe the author’s attitude toward society. Explain the social problems and
how they might be corrected or addressed.
- List the moral issues raised by the work.
- Name the character who is the moral center of the work. List his or her traits.
- Mark statements by the author or characters that seem to state themes.
