Themes

Last lesson in English we moved on from looking at genre to looking at theme. It is quite a tricky word to define, but we decided that it referred to what a story is about on a very general level. We also agreed that themes are universal, meaning they come up again and again, so, for example, there are lots of stories where love is a theme. Listed below are some of the themes we discussed in the lesson, but there are loads more:

Love

Fear

Sacrifice

Good vs. evil

Family

Crime and punishment

Standing up for what you believe in

We also talked about the various themes that crop up in popular books and films. We decided that crime and punishment, fear, family and dictatorship were all themes of Hunger Games, whereas love, family and standing up for what you believe in were all themes in Romeo and Juliet.

It is important to think about what themes we want to deal with when writing short stories, as we want our readers to have a clear idea of what the story is about, and this is something we will talk more about over the next few lessons.