Theme (narrative)

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Central topic, subject, or message within a narrative

title: "Theme (narrative)" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["literary-concepts", "narrative-units", "theme"] description: "Central topic, subject, or message within a narrative" topic_path: "general/literary-concepts" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_(narrative)" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Central topic, subject, or message within a narrative ::

In contemporary literary studies, a theme is a main topic, subject, or message within a narrative.{{Citation | url = http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/200321?rskey=8toWeL&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid | title = Oxford English Dictionary | access-date = January 26, 2012

A story may have several themes and generally longer works, such as novels, plays, films, or television series, do. Themes often explore historically common or cross-culturally recognizable ideas, such as ethical questions, and are usually implied rather than stated explicitly. An example of this would be whether one should live a seemingly better life, at the price of giving up parts of one's humanity, which is a theme in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Along with plot, character, setting, and style, theme is considered one of the components of fiction. Themes can be divided into two categories: a work's thematic concept is what readers "think the work is about" and its thematic statement being "what the work says about the subject".

Examples

Some common themes in literature are love, war, revenge, betrayal, grace, isolation, parenthood, forgiveness, loss, treachery, rich versus poor, appearance versus reality, and help from otherworldly powers.

Techniques

Various techniques may be used to express literary themes.

Leitwortstil

Leitwortstil, which means "leading word style" in German, is the repetition of a wording, often with a theme, in a narrative to make sure it catches the reader's attention. An example of a leitwortstil is the recurring phrase, "So it goes", in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five. Its seeming message is that the world is deterministic: that things only could have happened in one way, and that the future already is predetermined. But given the anti-war tone of the story, the message perhaps is on the contrary, that things could have been different. Its use in Scheherazade's Arabian Nights demonstrates how the technique can result to the unification of the constituent members of story cycles. In the Bible, various forms of the verb "to see" also recur and underscore the idea of Abraham as a seer. There is also the repeated use of the root kbd in Samuel I, to indicate "weightiness, honor, glory".

In New Testament studies, a leitwortstil is called a verbal thread. David Rhoads, Joanna Dewey, and Donald Michie identify several verbal threads in their seminal narrative-critical study of the Gospel of Mark. For example, Mark ties together two disparate narratives with a verbal thread that forces the reader to search for connections between the narratives. The word for ripping or tearing (Greek: σχίζω, schizō) is found at the baptism of Jesus in Mark 1:10 and at the rending of the temple veil in Mark 15:38.

Thematic patterning

Thematic patterning means the insertion of a recurring motif in a narrative. For example, various scenes in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men are about loneliness. Thematic patterning is evident in One Thousand and One Nights, an example being the story of "The City of Brass". According to David Pinault, the overarching theme of that tale, in which a group of travelers roam the desert in search of ancient brass artifacts, is that "riches and pomp tempt one away from God". The narrative is interrupted several times by stories within the story. These include a tale recorded in an inscription found in the palace of Kush ibh Shaddad; a story told by a prisoner about Solomon; and an episode involving Queen Tadmur's corpse. According to Pinault, "each of these minor narratives introduces a character who confesses that he once proudly enjoyed worldly prosperity: subsequently, we learn, the given character has been brought low by God ... These minor tales ultimately reinforce the theme of the major narrative".

Notes

References

  • {{citation | title = Fiction First Aid: Instant Remedies for Novels, Stories and Scripts | first = Raymond | last = Obstfeld | publisher = Writer's Digest Books | location = Cincinnati, OH | year = 2002 | isbn = 1-58297-117-X | url-access = registration | url = https://archive.org/details/fictionfirstaidi0000obst

References

  1. {{harvtxt. Carey. Snodgrass. 1999
  2. (1994). "Fiction: Reading, Reacting, Writing". Paulinas.
  3. Weitz, Morris. (2002). "Shakespeare Survey". Cambridge University Press.
  4. Kerr, John. (2022-07-06). "The 3 Essential Elements of Plot Every Writer Should Know".
  5. {{harvtxt. Obstfeld. 2002
  6. Griffith, Kelley. (2010). "Writing Essays about Literature". Cengage Learning.
  7. {{harvtxt. Baldick. 2004
  8. {{harvtxt. Carey. Snodgrass. 1999
  9. {{harvtxt. Brown. Rosenberg. 1998
  10. (2011). "A New Kind of Big: How Churches of Any Size Can Partner to Transform Communities". Baker Books.
  11. Pinault, David. (1992). "Story Telling Techniques in the "Arabian Nights"". Brill.
  12. Levenson, Alan T.. (2011). "The Making of the Modern Jewish Bible: How Scholars in Germany, Israel, and America Transformed an Ancient Text". Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc..
  13. (2010). "The Complete Literary Guide to the Bible". Zondervan Academic.
  14. David Rhoads, Joanna Dewey, and Donald Michie, ''Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel'', 3rd ed. (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012), 48.
  15. Pinault, David. 1992. ''Story-telling techniques in the Arabian nights''. Leiden: Brill. p. 22. {{ISBN. 9004095306
  16. (2001). "John Steinbeck's Of mice and men". Research & Education Association.
  17. Heath, Peter. (May 1994). "Reviewed work(s) ''Story-Telling Techniques in the Arabian Nights'' by David Pinault". [[Cambridge University Press]].
  18. Pinault, David. 1992. ''Story-telling techniques in the Arabian nights''. Leiden: Brill. p. 23. {{ISBN. 9004095306

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