English – Short Story – Terminology
THEME –Theme is the controlling idea or central insight of a story. It is a comment about human nature, and/or about life stated or implied by the story. To determine theme, think about what the purpose of the story is, what view of life it supports, or what insight into life it reveals.
Methods for discovering theme:
a)Ask yourself how the character has changed, and what the character has learned from that change.
b)Explore the central conflict and its outcome.
c)Examine the title.
THEME STATEMENT – This is a one sentence general statement about life or human nature which can be derived by interpreting a story’s overall message. It does not mention specifics from the story (i.e., specific names, settings, or events), but instead generalizes accurately and comprehensively about the story’s main meaning.
How to write a theme statement:
a)The theme must be stated in a complete sentence. Watch how you word your theme statement. Words such as all, every, always, most, some, may, sometimes, often, and never have a big impact on readers. Ask yourself, is this precisely the impact I want?
b)The theme statement is your own original statement about the main overall idea of the story. It should be worded as a generalization about life or human nature. It does not directly refer to specific characters or situations in the story. The generalization should not be contradicted by ideas or details of the story; it should account for all parts of the story.
c)Avoid using clichés or trite, uninformative sayings such as “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” Likewise avoid using morals. A moral is a lesson that is worded as an easily remembered saying, such as “What goes around comes around.” Clichés and morals are unoriginal and require no serious thought. A theme statement should be an original, concise, thoughtful analysis of story meaning and purpose that you can discuss and verify by making reference to events and characters in the story.