Theme

Theme in literature relates to what a book is about.

What is the theme of a story?

A theme is a universal concept that pervades and recurs throughout every piece of fiction. It is the story’s meaning and is expressed through the plot and through the character’s journeys. Some will describe it as the ‘heartbeat’ or ‘soul’ of the story.

How you answer the question, “what is your book about” quickly reveals your perception of your book’s themes. Your story needs to be about something . By identifying its themes, you can equip yourself with a compass that shows you what’s important in your story. It will guide you towards creating moments that resonate with readers, making your entire book that much more compelling.

Themes are reinforced by motifs. On a grander scale, the overarching theme of a novel often isn’t mentioned explicitly —, you don’t want to spoonfeed everything to your reader. But as certain ideas keep bubbling up again and again throughout a narrative, they will build up into something that the reader perceives. It will affect your reader, whether they know it or not.

Themes reflect the human condition…

All stories are about the human condition. Characters are bound to — and by — common universal truths of humanity. Even if a book is about robots, dinosaurs, aliens, or gods, the engine that drives the story will actually reveal something about human nature.

Your story’s theme can be as broad as ‘love’ or ‘loneliness’ or as narrow as the idea that ‘death is the unifying human experience’. It can also be a universal statement about humanity that an author investigates or explains through the course of a story. These might be statements like “Greed is the greatest force in human culture” or “Human behavior is the product of upbringing and experience”.

A book’s theme may often be about certain groups of people or man-made systems and their effects on human. They can be expressed as hypotheses like “Baby Boomers are to blame for the state of the world” or “humans secretly fear technology.” And if the theme of a book is a hypothesis, then its story will be like an experiment, putting that theory to the test.

So, now that we’ve spent some time looking at what constitutes a theme, let’s see some in action.

10 Examples of Theme in Literature

A well-written book in any genre will have something going on under the surface. Let’s take a look at a random sample of popular novels and their primary theme.

1. The Lord of the Rings

• Story: A hobbit is tasked with destroying an all-powerful ring coveted by all who encounter it.
• Theme: The addictive and corrupting nature of power

2. Nineteen Eighty-Four

3. Don Quixote

• Story: Fueled by romantic stories, a Spanish hidalgo loses his mind and embarks on a flight of fancy to a world where windmill are dragons and prostitutes are respected ladies.
• Theme: Rationalism vs Romanticism

4. Gone Girl

• Story: A woman goes missing from her suburban home. Her husband becomes the prime suspect, and in her absence, she becomes a media sensation.
• Theme: Stifling modern expectations on women

5. Animal Farm

• Story: A group of barnyard animals take over the running of a farm and try to build a better society.
• Theme: “Power Corrupts”

6. Lolita

• Story: A middle-aged man becomes infatuated with an underaged girl.
• Theme: The nature of obsession

7. Of Mice and Men

• Story: George and Lennie eke out a living as migrant workers in the Great Depression. George, while protecting his friend, also seems to exploit him.
• Theme: Loyalty

8. The Great Gatsby

• Story: A mysterious tycoon reinvents himself to woo his childhood crush amidst the backdrop of the New York’s decadent 1920s.
• Theme: The failure of “The American Dream”

9. We Need to Talk About Kevin

• Story: Through a series of confessional letters, a woman deals with the aftermath of mass killing committed by her teenage son.
• Theme: Guilt

10. The Da Vinci Code

• Story: A professor hunts for the truth of the Holy Grail and finds himself at odds with the Catholic Church.
• Theme: Faith vs Knowledge

Naturally, many of these books will deal with more than just one theme, but notice how certain subjects seem to pop up again and again (power, obsession). This is not a coincidence.

A theme need not be original…

Just as countless books deal with love and death, there are as many ways to flip these concepts over on their sides. You could write about love for decades and never run out of unique perspectives: Is love a transformative power? Can a person really love more than one person? Is our concept of love determined by our specific culture? And so on…

How do you write about a theme?

Every author should want their novel to be about something, but how do you apply it to your book?

Option 1: Have a theme in place from the start

Many books start from a kernel of an idea. At this stage, the author has only the slightest idea of a plot, but they already know what they want to say about a certain subject.

One way is by mind-mapping: start with your core idea and develop all how characters might be affected by your theme. If you want to write about loneliness, you might think of a scenario where a woman moves to a busy city yet feels more isolated than ever — or a child at school who becomes gradually detached from his classmates. You might think of small snippets of dialogue, abstract images, or music pieces that could potentially inspire other plot lines and characters. These things will go onto your mind map.

Option 2: Write a draft and see what happens

You need not predetermine the theme of a book. You can always start by writing a story and then seeing what concepts arise. You might have a great story about a man who falls in love with the girl next door. After the first draft, you might notice that obsession keeps popping up, and you’re intrigued. It’s then a matter of going back in the rewrite and seeing what you can do to emphasize these themes and maximize their impact.

Whichever approach you choose, you need to discover what you want your novel to achieve concerning your theme. Do you want to persuade the reader, explain an issue, analyze a problem, expose a hidden truth, or to simply entertain? Your decision here will determine how subtle you must be in plotting your thematic points.

Option 3: You can try to ignore themes

You can choose not to seek a theme, but writers are human, and we instinctively work towards patterns. I bet that at the end of any first draft of a novel you write, you won’t have to look too deep to find a recurring idea.

Theme is there to help, not hinder…

You shouldn’t be losing sleep over the theme of a book you’re writing. Despite any pressure to ensure your book has a thematic thread, articulating what your book is about will guide your rewrites. Remember this while you’re tapping away at the keyboard, and you’ll always know when you’re straying off course.

How do you approach themes when writing fiction? Do you start with a theme in mind, or do you look for common threads as you’re writing? Or are themes unnecessary to all forms of fiction?

Looking forward to your comments!