Theme: What’s the Big

Idea?MRS. WEST

Theme is…• A message or truth about life or people that

applies to everyone. • For example:

I can’t ever get what I want!

Can you figure out the theme, or the message that applies to everyone, here?

“You can’t always get what you want.”

Let’s practice finding the theme of a song before we try to find

the theme of a story.

Are you ready to ge t up

and d a n c e ?

S ing the

L y r i c swhile you dance

So let’s find the theme…They say I'm a rapper, and I say no…They say what you doing tryna do some zydeco…I just let the music come from my soul…So all of my people can stay on the floor…They got a brand new dance (come on), you gotta move your muscle…Brand new dance, it's called the Cupid Shuffle…It

don't matter if you're young or you're old (here we go),

We gone show you how it go…

Look at the first verse:Zydeco is music that’s traditionally from the South

The artist is saying that music comes from his soul, or from within him

The artist makes a point that whether you’re young or old, you can enjoy music

The theme is:Music comes from within and can be enjoyed by anyone, young or old.

W h a t a b o u t theme i n l i t e r a t u r e ?

• Still “A message or truth about life or people that applies to everyone.”

• Theme is a discovery of truth that we uncover from a text that we can relate to our own human experience.

•What does this “relate to our own human experience” stuff mean?

T h e H u m a n E x p e r i e n c e

• If we read a well-written story about two friends who betray each other, we may feel that we have lived through the betrayal ourselves.•We can connect our emotions to the outcome

of the story.• That’s because WE’RE HUMAN .•We can relate what we read in a story to our

own lives, because we have HUMAN EXPERIENCES .

Theme is important!

• Have you ever read a story that’s really, REALLY, old?

S t o r i e s t h a t l a s t a l o n g t i m e

h a v e t h e i r t heme t o t h a n k .

These stories tend to focus on the

big truths in everyone’s life.

Understanding Love

GreedAmbition

Dealing with LossAccepting

Responsibility

The joys and

problems of

friendship

Themes that people can relate to the human experience never get old – whether they were written hundreds of years ago in a snowbound Alaskan village, or yesterday on a laptop in Japan.

What theme i sn ’ t .Theme is not plot.

Plot is what a story is about – characters, setting, events, etc.

Theme is what a story is really about –

what the story reveals to you about life.

W h e r e d o e s t h e a u t h o r t e l l

y o u t h e t heme ?

They don’t!

Here are some questions to ask yourself when trying to identify the theme of a story:

•How has the main character changed over the course of the story?•What has he or she discovered by the story’s end?

•What is the story’s title?•Does it reveal anything special about the story?

•Which passages strike you as especially important to the story?•What ideas about life do they suggest?

W h y e v a l u a t e t h e m e i n s t e a d

o f j u s t e n j o y i n g t h e p l o t ?

Because the theme will get through to you whether you realize it or not.

Huh?!

•Read a story about gang life and you’ve absorbed the idea that the world is a dangerous place where problems are often solved through violence.

•Read a story about teen romance and you’ve been told once again that nothing is more important than finding true love.

While you may not agree with all themes,

putting theme into words brings it out in the open, where you can look at it critically

and decide if it fits with what you know

about life.

N o w y o u ’ r e a n e x p e r t o n t h e m e .