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:
HINTS OR CLUES LEADING TO THEME:
BRIEF EXPLANATION:
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, selfsatisfied 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-andpiano 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
bear to look at the woman then, so I stared at my plate and waited for quite a long time. Not long
enough, though. She was still crying when I finally glanced over there again. Crying quietly and
heartbrokenly and hopelessly, all to herself, under the gay big brim of her best hat.