The Meaning and the Message in Fiction
Theme is that element of Literature that addresses what the story is all about. It is the thread of the main narrative or the spine of the literary work. Without a theme, you don’t have a story.
A story can have several themes: major and minor themes. When a story is about the treatment of an idea which a writer is trying to convey, this idea is called a theme.
However, theme and subject matter are not the same. A writer can choose the subject of war, but with it, explores the theme of his personal opinion that war is a scourge on the human society or his/her opinion that without wars some vital issues cannot be settled in life, or the personal opinion that war is a necessary evil in human existence.
The theme of a story can be deduced by a reader as he/she analyses characters (because themes can be presented through the thoughts and conversations of different characters), plot (the actions and events taking place in a literary work are helpful in discovering a work’s theme) and other literary devices. Experiences of the main character or his feelings can also give us an idea of the theme of a story.
So, there are two categories of theme: thematic concept and thematic statement. While the former deals with what readers think the theme is about, the latter deals with what the story says about the subject it’s dealing with.
There are several ways a writer can present themes in a literary work. For an idea to be called a theme, it must spread through a story as a unifying idea.
A unifying idea is like the thread that holds all ideas together in a narrative. Nothing is superfluous in a well-written narrative as everything has a bearing to the main idea.
There are recurrent themes in Literature which the cognoscenti have after thorough studies declared that they have been found to be popular themes in Literature.
These are: love, death, prejudice (ethnic, racial, class, sexism, etc.), etc. Others are: survival, power and corruption (of course power goes hand in hand with corruption because power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely), courage and heroism, coming of age and of course, good versus evil.
Australian freelance editor, proofreader and writer, Claire Bradshaw in her 10 Most Popular Literary Theme Examples writes, “Every story has themes – whether they’re consciously explored or simmering under the surface – and the exploration of different themes adds depth and layers to any story, especially, if those themes are universal.”
Love in all its ramifications have been explored in not only books, but movies, cartoons, even in paintings. Such different aspects of love like first love, forbidden love (in fact, I know a novel with the title, Forbidden Love), lost love, unrequited love, love at first sight, tragic love, unconditional love, fierce love, reluctant love, etc., have all been written about.
No one who went through school would forget Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It’s an outstanding love story whose title has been adopted for lovers the world over – albeit, it’s tragic. Then there’s the classic Jane Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice which explores love that grows slowly from dislike and misunderstanding.
Also highly explored in novels and other genres, is the theme of death. A remarkable exploration of the process of leaving this life is seen in Catherine Anne Porter’s “The Jilting of Granny Weatherall.”
It is a remarkable short story of an old woman leaving this world. While death is a universal idea, the author explores the processes of an old woman going through the throes of death. It came from an angle that perhaps we never thought of.
The author takes her readers through the experiences or what it might feel like transiting from this present world into another, taking the experience of a strong woman who had gone through pains, recoveries and joys in life. It is seen that at the time of her passing, life brings her experiences back to her.
How to pick and treat a theme
In choosing a theme, a writer must think of an idea that is universal, but with a local content. Think of a perspective that is fresh and unusual.
Idea is everything. A fresh idea with a punch and a universal acceptance is great. A good writer, who has an original idea which is universal and explores this idea from an angle that is totally unique and fresh, has delivered.
For example, look at what Ngozi Adiche did with the theme of domestic violence in Purple Hibiscus? The author using both the title of the book and a minor theme of revolt (from oppression), sneaks in a personal opinion of how women in abusive relationship can fight back (okay! Even if she’s not advocating that wives should poison husbands who batter them, but she’s saying to the men (perhaps), that oppressed wives can fight back, and it might be very damaging!).
Kambili’s mother unable to continue in the harmful atmosphere she finds herself at home, does what is rare, as rare as a purple hibiscus in her culture. An African Christian wife and mother whom religion and culture have taught submission to her husband poisons her husband to death in order to deliver herself from the worst kind of oppression – the tyranny at home!
The Bible says, a husband is the glory of a wife, given to her for a covering, but when that covering becomes oppressive, threatening a wife’s peace and life, she must remove herself from it.
But, since her society strongly frowns at divorce, in fact with a threat of being branded a bad woman; in order to please society and maintain her good woman status, she does the unthinkable – she poisons her husband! This of course gives her grounds to continue as a good woman in a new pathetic role of a widow.
In Kathryn Stockett’s 2019 novel, The Help, the editor from Harper and Row, Mrs Elaine Stein, advises Skeeter to write to her if she finds topics that are ‘original’ and punchy. There’s no true original idea since all ideas have been explored since the world began, but a writer’s new way of exploring a particular angle of a universal idea that has not been (maybe widely) explored, gives an idea its originality.
In the same novel, The Help, Stockett explored a universal idea of household staff and the way they are treated in the racially biased southern part of North America. Stockett explored this universal situation from a fresh angle of how the helps feel about the job which their society has confined them to.
This is both original and punchy. These black women in America whose major occupation are house-keeping and raising white women’s children suffer racial discrimination and all kinds of assaults and insults, like not being allowed to use toilets within the house.
In Africa and Nigeria in particular, house-helps suffer class discrimination and injustice. Some are even victims of domestic violence, suffering all manner of inhuman treatments. In the southern part of North America, black help (helpers) are racially discriminated against, but in Africa, helps are dealing with people of their own race and even ethnicity, but are made to suffer because they are of the lower class.
So, the theme of Stockett’s novel, The Help, although universal, has a local content approach. The theme is also original and punchy because here are grown women whom children they brought up on their knees are now their employers, who talk down on them and tell them what to do!
For stories to be unique and original and hot, they must be exploring topics, ideas that although we know them, the author is presenting them in a totally new or original way, from a perspective that is surprising and captivating.
Finally, in choosing themes too, writers should very well look into the society they live in and address the ills members of that society suffer.
Happy reading and writing!
