English Composition

English Composition Study Guide

4.5 Theme The theme of a poem or story is the overall message the author is trying to convey to readers. The message is usually a comment on life or the human experience. Most stories and poems have a central theme or message, and several smaller themes that are explored as well. Analyzing the theme is important to understanding the reason why the author wrote a text. One common mistake students make when identifying the theme of a text is trying to use a cliché or moral to describe the theme. The theme of a text isn’t like a lesson learned in a children’s story. Instead it is a big-picture idea that asks the reader to contemplate larger and more complicated aspects of the human mind and experiences encountered when living life. The theme is rarely spelled out for the reader to easily decipher. Finding the theme requires readers to make inferences from the text. When analyzing a piece of literature to understand the theme, the reader should look at how all aspects of the text work together. Literary devices often give clues to the theme. The development of characters and the plot convey meaning, and the way in which the conflict of the story is resolved can add to the theme. A reader should carefully analyze these items and read a text multiple times to interpret the themes of the text.

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