1. Short Story Unit Chapter Four
THEME
Short Story Unit
Chapter Four

2. Definition
The theme of a piece of fiction is its controlling idea or central insight. It is the unifying generalization about life stated or implied by the story. (human existence)
Not all stories have a significant theme. Everything you read in here will! BECAUSE, theme exists in all literary fiction but only some commercial fiction. Commercial fiction is sometimes written to scare, humor, surprise or provide suspense to the reader. In literary fiction it is the primary purpose of the story or in the words of AP “the meaning of the work as a whole.”

3. Confused?
Remember that the reason an author writes a story is not to yield up some abstract statement. True literary fiction writers deliver stories to your intellect, your emotions, your senses, and your imagination.
Sometimes theme is explicit and sometimes it is implicit – there may be more than one!

4. Confused?
Inexperienced readers look for a “moral” in everything they read. A rule of conduct they should follow. The word moral is too narrow to fit the kind of illumination provided in a first-rate piece of literary fiction. Theme and moral are not interchangeable, however we will be using some children’s fables to practice writing theme statements.

5. Principles of Theme
#1 - Theme should be expressible in the form of a statement with a subject and a predicate. (the part of a sentence or clause containing a verb and stating something about the subject (e.g., went home in John went home ).
Friendship, love, loyalty are not theme statements
“Loyalty to country often inspires heroic self- sacrifice”- is a theme statement.

6. Principles of Theme
#2 - The theme should be stated as a generalization about life. Do not use names of characters or refer to precise places or events – it becomes too specific.
#3 - Be careful not to make the generalization larger than is justified by using terms like every, all, always, will, and must.

7. Principles of Theme
#4 – Theme is the central and unifying concept of the story.
#5 – There is no one way of stating the theme of the story.
#6 – Avoid reducing the theme to a cliché, such as “you can’t judge a book by it’s cover.” If statements like this pop in your head, this could be a sign a more thoughtful, deep and thorough look at the author’s purpose should be utilized.

8. AP Testing
On question #3 – the Open-Ended question on the AP exam, you will asked to discuss some type of literary device (setting, symbol, protagonist, antagonist, foil, etc.) or character experience (journey, childhood, justice, alienation, etc.) AND link it back to the theme (meaning of the work as a whole). If you omit this part, you have missed a portion of the prompt and will be scored no higher than a 5. You will be cautioned not to give a plot summary. Remember: you are a sophisticated reader and writer!

9. Literary Terms: List 2 11. Assonance 12. Asyndeton 13. Bibliomancy
14. Chiasmus
15. Colloquialism
16. Connotation
17. Consonance
18. Denotation
19. Epilogue
20. Euphemism

10. Works Cited
Perrine Laurence, Thomas R. Arp, and Greg Johnson. Perrine's story and structure. 10th ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt College, Print.