What Is Theme In Literature?

What is theme? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, theme in literature is "the subject of a piece of writing."

Now, that might be factually correct (who am I to argue with the dictionary people?), but I still don't believe it is helpful to anyone just starting out in novel writing who is trying to work out what literary themes actually are.

The "subject of a piece of writing" suggests "subject matter" - and, for me, a novel's subject matter is something concrete and definite. So the subject matter of a horror novel, for example, might be vampires and spooky castles.

A literary theme, on the other hand, is not concrete at all. It can usually be summed up by a phrase like "grief" or "unrequited love" or "blind faith" - something intangible like that.

So let's start again...

What is theme? According to my definition, the theme of a novel is simply what a novel "means".

I think I have stated elsewhere on this site (perhaps in the section on How to Write a Novel) that a novel's theme is what it the story is "about." Thinking about it, though, that sounds dangerously like "subject matter" again, which is why I am defining theme here as what the events of a novel "mean".

A love story, for example, is "about" two people meeting and falling in love. In other words, it is about...

• The characters
• The plot (or what the characters do)
• The setting (or where they do it)

...and these things are all on the novel's surface. In fact, they are the novel's subject matter.

The theme of a novel, however - or the meaning of a novel - happens beneath the surface, and it is essentially the lesson that the surface story teaches us, or the conclusion that can be drawn from the novel's events.

(If all of this is sounding kind of vague, that's because theme in literature is kind of vague. But we are slowly edging closer to a more concrete definition...

What is theme? The theme of a novel is the deeper layer of meaning running beneath the story's surface.

Still confused? Then let's take a look at that love story I meantioned in a little more detail...

• John works in a bank. He has never had much luck with women, and he can't believe his luck when Sarah, the stunning new employee, is interested in getting to know him better.

  (Bet you never thought an article called What Is Theme? would turn into romantic drama!)

• They date, share their first kiss, all the usual stuff - but John still can't understand what Sarah sees in an ordinary guy like him. She tells him she loves him, pure and simple, but John can't quite believe her.

• When Sarah starts taking evening classes in cookery, John becomes increasingly suspicious and one night he follows her, convinced that she is seeing someone else. But she is cooking, just like she said, and when Sarah realizes that John has followed her, she dumps him. End of story.

Now, everything I talked about was on the story's surface - the characters, plot and setting, in other words. I didn't mention theme once - but it is there, nevertheless.

How you choose to interpret the meaning of a story is sometimes a matter of opinion (different readers can take different things away from fiction). But, for me, the lesson to take away from the Jack and Sarah tale (or the conclusion to be drawn from it) is that love without trust can never work.

Back to solving the problem of "What Is Theme?"

So far, we have decided that theme is what the events of a novel "mean" (or what the novel is "about" on a philosophical level).

The surface storytelling satisfies the reader's need to escape and to be entertained.

The sub-surface "meaning" of the story satisfies their need to draw a moral, or a lesson, or a conclusion from the events, thus furthering their understanding of the human condition.

(See What Is a Novel's Purpose? for more on the need to provide both entertainment and understanding to readers of fiction.)

This "understanding of the human condition," incidentally, needn't be psychological in nature. It can be political, sociological, whatever you like.

Here is a selection of issues that a novel's theme might be about...

• How love without trust is doomed (Jack and Sarah).
• The death penalty - is it right or wrong?
• The destructive nature of guilt.
• The futility of war.
• The necessity of war.
• An exploration of happiness.
• Corruption in local government.
• How friends are more important than family.
• How family is more important than friends.
• The balance between work and leisure in modern society.

Something worth noting is that it isn't necessarily your job as a writer to provide answers, but merely to ask questions.

If you are strongly opposed to the death penalty, for example, so much so that you want to base a novel around that theme, you could write a story about an innocent man (or even a guilty man) on death row.

The way you construct your story will subtly but forcefully make your position clear: that death as punishment is wrong!

But if you feel strongly about the issue but aren't sure which side of the debate to come down on, you could write a novel setting out both sides of the argument and leave it to the reader to reach their own conclusions.

Your novel will ask questions, but it won't provide answers.

You could do something similar with a more psychological theme in a novel, like guilt.

Is it better to live with the weight of guilt on your shoulders or to come clean and face the consequences? You really don't know. So you could explore both possibilities in your novel, perhaps through different viewpoint characters, and let the reader take from the novel what they will.

And that is about as concrete an explanation of theme that you are likely to find. Here is my final definition...

What is theme? The theme of a novel is the deeper layer of meaning running beneath the story's surface. While the surface story entertains the readers, the theme helps them to reach a new understanding of some aspect of the human condition.

Or to put it another way...

Novels are essentially about people (fictional characters) undergoing experiences (the plot). These experiences - their nature, and the effect they have on the characters - will cause the reader to come to conclusions about some aspect of life. These conclusions are your theme.

Next Step: Having decided what theme means, the next article is all about why the theme of a story matters...