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    LIT 201 Theme Handout

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    Caroline Holloway
    The document provides definitions and tips for identifying themes in fictional works. It discusses how to analyze characters' conflicts and resolutions, titles, character changes or realizations, observations about life, and symbols. It instructs the reader to state themes in general terms rather than just summarizing plots. The exercise asks the reader to identify the theme of the short story "Birthday Party" and provide clues from the story that led to the theme.

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    LIT 201 Theme Handout

    Uploaded by

    Caroline Holloway
    18 views3 pages
    The document provides definitions and tips for identifying themes in fictional works. It discusses how to analyze characters' conflicts and resolutions, titles, character changes or realizations, observations about life, and symbols. It instructs the reader to state themes in general terms rather than just summarizing plots. The exercise asks the reader to identify the theme of the short story "Birthday Party" and provide clues from the story that led to the theme.

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    LIT 201 Theme handout

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    The document provides definitions and tips for identifying themes in fictional works. It discusses how to analyze characters' conflicts and resolutions, titles, character changes or realizations, observations about life, and symbols. It instructs the reader to state themes in general terms rather than just summarizing plots. The exercise asks the reader to identify the theme of the short story "Birthday Party" and provide clues from the story that led to the theme.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as RTF, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as rtf, pdf, or txt
    18 views3 pages

    LIT 201 Theme Handout

    Uploaded by

    Caroline Holloway
    The document provides definitions and tips for identifying themes in fictional works. It discusses how to analyze characters' conflicts and resolutions, titles, character changes or realizations, observations about life, and symbols. It instructs the reader to state themes in general terms rather than just summarizing plots. The exercise asks the reader to identify the theme of the short story "Birthday Party" and provide clues from the story that led to the theme.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as RTF, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as rtf, pdf, or txt
    of 3

    Analyzing for Theme

    LIT 201 Sarah L. Dye

    DEFINITIONS
    1. General idea or insight the entire story reveals
    2. An abstract claim, or doctrine, whether implicit to asserted, which an
    imaginative work is designed to incorporate and make persuasive to the
    reader
    3. The central or dominating idea in a literary work
    4. The abstract concept which is made concrete through its representation in
    person, action, and image in the work
    5. The generalization that is either stated or implied and holds the story
    together
    6. Controlling idea
    7. Central insight
    8. The story’s purpose
    9. Moral
    10. The point of the story

    TIPS FOR RECOGNIZING THEME IN


    FICTION
    1. Read the author’s other writings.
    2. Closely analyze the character’s conflicts – what they are and how they are
    concluded?
    3. Look back once more at the title of the story. From what you have read,
    what does it indicate?
    4. Does the main character in any way change in the story? Does this
    character arrive at any eventual realization or understanding? Are you left
    with any realization or understanding you did not have before?
    5. Does the author make any general observation about life or human nature?
    Do the characters make any? (Caution: Character now and again will utter
    opinions with which the reader is not necessarily suppose to agree.)
    6. Does the story contain any especially curious objects, mysterious flat
    characters, significant animals, repeated names, song titles, or whatever,
    that hint toward meanings larger than such things ordinarily have? Are
    there clues which lead you toward your statement of theme? In literary
    stories, such symbols may point to central themes.
    7. When you have worded your statement of theme, have you cast your
    statement into general language, not just given a plot summary?
    8. Does your statement hold true for the story as a whole, not just for part of
    it?

    “Birthday Party” Exercise


    Reread the very short story, “Birthday Party,” by Katherine Brush. In no more
    than two sentences, write out the theme of the short story. List the specific hints
    or clues from the story itself that led you to your statement of theme and briefly
    explain them.

    THEME:
    BIRTHDAY PARTY

    They were a couple in their late thirties, and they looked unmistakably married. They sat on
    the banquette opposite us in a little narrow restaurant, having dinner. The man had a round, self-
    satisfied face, with glasses on it; the woman was fadingly pretty, in a big hat. There was nothing
    conspicuous about them, nothing particularly noticeable until the end of their meal, when it suddenly
    became obvious that this was an Occasion ---in fact, the husband's birthday, and the wife had
    planned a little surprise for him.

    It arrived, in the form of a small but glossy birthday cake, with one pink candle burning
    in the center. The headwaiter brought it in and placed it before the husband, and meanwhile
    the violin-and-piano orchestra played' “Happy Birthday to You” and the wife beamed with shy
    pride over her little surprise, and such few people as were in the restaurant tried to help out
    with a pattering of applause. It became clear at once that help was needed, because the
    husband was not pleased. Instead he was hotly embarrassed, and indignant at his wife for
    embarrassing him.

    You looked at him and you saw this and you thought, "Oh, now, don’t be like that!” But he
    was like that, and as soon as the little cake had been deposited on table, and the orchestra had
    finished the birthday piece, and the general attention shifted from the man and woman, I saw him
    say something to her under his breath -- some punishing thing, quick and curt and unkind. I couldn't

    HINTS OR CLUES LEADING TO THEME:

    BRIEF EXPLANATION:

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