ENG 2: Sharing Ideas About Theme

Sharing Ideas About Theme

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ABOUT THIS LESSON

Lesson Objectives

Essential Questions

Skills Needed

By the end of the lesson, students will be able to:

• Define theme and distinguish it from subject or topic.
• Identify possible themes in a short text.
• Write a summary that includes an explanation of a story's theme.

• How do authors communicate themes through characters, conflicts, and resolution?
• Why might different readers interpret a text’s theme differently?
• What makes a theme universal or relevant beyond the text itself?

Students must be able to:

1. Track the development of theme in a story.
2. Identify the literary elements that convey a story's theme.t

do now:

• Think about a book, movie, or TV show you know well. What is one big idea or message (theme) that the story shares?
• How does the story show that theme?
• Give one example or moment that helps reveal the theme.

plot meets theme

How can you include ideas about theme when you summarize a story?

• Suppose you just won two free tickets to a performance of Romeo and Juliet. You've asked a friend to go with you, but incredibly, he doesn't know anything about Shakespeare's most famous play. Skeptically he asks, "What's it about?"
• How do you convince your friend that Romeo and Juliet is worth seeing--that it is, in fact, one of the greatest stories ever written? There are at least two different ways to summarize or sum up the play for him. Read the paragraph on each tab to learn the difference between these two approaches.

plot meets theme

Just the Facts

Romeo and Juliet is about two young lovers from feuding families, the Montagues and the Capulets. They marry in secret, but the violent conflict between their families keeps them apart. Juliet's father, not knowing about the marriage, tries to force her to marry Count Paris. The sympathetic Friar Lawrence comes to her aid, giving her a drug that will fool people into thinking she is dead. He sends a messenger to alert Romeo to the plan so that the lovers can run off together. But Romeo doesn't get the message in time! Thinking Juliet is really dead, he kills himself. Juliet, waking from her drugged sleep in the family crypt, finds Romeo dead and kills herself. The only good outcome of the tragedy is that their families finally end their feud.

plot meets theme

The Big Ideas

Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare's famous tale of star-crossed young lovers. They fall in love despite the violent feud between their families, the Montagues and the Capulets. They marry in secret, but cruel fate keeps them apart. It's the ultimate tragic love story, building up to an awful climax in which Romeo thinks Juliet is dead and kills himself. Juliet, waking from a drugged sleep to see Romeo dead, kills herself, too. Horrified by their deaths, the two families finally end their feud. The play has more than one important message, but I think the most powerful theme is that the forces of fate rule our lives.

what's the point?

Why include theme in your summary?

A summary of a story's plot zeroes in on the facts. It answers questions about when, where, and how. A theme-based summary zooms out to consider the larger message--the "why" of the story. A theme-based summary is also a little bit about you, the reader: It includes your personal understanding of the story's main meaning. Your insights into the story can make the summary more interesting and valuable for your readers than "just the facts."

Summing Up Theme

What steps should you use to write a theme-based summary?

To write a theme-based summary, first you have to identify the story's theme! Then you need to consider how the events of the plot relate to the theme. The steps below will help your prepare to write your own theme-based summary. Identify the theme of the story. What main idea or message might this plot support?

A teenage girl named Eva moves from a small village in Puerto Rico to New York. She struggles to improve her English and to keep up with her classes while helping to support her family with an after-school job. Her new friends try to get her to goof off with them instead of working and studying. Despite her exhaustion, she stays focused on her goal: to graduate as valedictorian of her class. All of Eva's plans get derailed, though, when her little brother gets seriously injured as a bystander of a gang shooting. Eva spends her evenings in his hospital room, telling him jokes and stories and trying to sneak in a little studying. He makes a full recovery. Although she doesn't become valedictorian, she graduates with honors. After seeing the efforts of the medical staff to save her brother, she decides that she wants to be a doctor.

Summing Up Theme

To write a theme-based summary, first you have to identify the story's theme! Then you need to consider how the events of the plot relate to the theme. The steps below will help your prepare to write your own theme-based summary. Consider how the plot is related to the theme. What main idea or message might this plot support? Bring plot and theme together to write a theme-based summary.

I could relate to this story about a Puerto Rican family who struggled to get by as immigrants in New York. Although I am Iranian American, I've had some of the same experiences as Eva. I think everyone should read this story to learn more about the challenges that immigrants face. Is the summary above a theme-based summary? Why or why not?

you try it

Apply the strategies you've learned for writing a theme-based summary.

Now it's your turn. First, read or re-read the story "The Dancing Partner," by Jerome K. Jerome. Then use the questions on the right to help you practice the steps required to write a theme-based summary.

The Dancing Partner by Jerome K. Jerome "This story," commenced MacShaugnassy, "comes from Furtwangen, a small town in the Black Forest. There lived there a very wonderful old fellow named Nicholaus Geibel. His business was the making of mechanical toys, at which work he had acquired an almost European reputation. He made rabbits that would emerge from the heart of a cabbage, flop their ears, smooth their whiskers, and disappear again; cats that would wash their faces, and mew so naturally that dogs would mistake them for real cats and fly at them; dolls with phonographs concealed within them, that would raise their hats and say, 'Good morning; how do you do?' and some that would even sing a song. "But, he was something more than a mere mechanic; he was an artist. His work was with him a hobby, almost a passion. His shop was filled with all manner of strange things that never would, or could, be sold -- things he had made for the pure love of making them. He had contrived a mechanical donkey that would trot for two hours by means of stored electricity, and trot, too, much faster than the live article, and with less need for exertion on the part of the driver, a bird that would shoot up into the air, fly round and round in a circle, and

you try it

drop to earth at the exact spot from where it started; a skeleton that, supported by an upright iron bar, would dance a hornpipe, a life-size lady doll that could play the fiddle, and a gentleman with a hollow inside who could smoke a pipe and drink more lager beer than any three average German students put together, which is saying much. "Indeed, it was the belief of the town that old Geibel could make a man capable of doing everything that a respectable man need want to do. One day he made a man who did too much, and it came about in this way: "Young Doctor Follen had a baby, and the baby had a birthday. Its first birthday put Doctor Follen's household into somewhat of a flurry, but on the occasion of its second birthday, Mrs. Doctor Follen gave a ball in honor of the event. Old Geibel and his daughter Olga were among the guests. "During the afternoon of the next day some three or four of Olga's bosom friends, who had also been present at the ball, dropped in to have a chat about it. They naturally fell to discussing the men, and to criticizing their dancing. Old Geibel was in the room, but he appeared to be absorbed in his newspaper, and the girls took no notice of him. "'There seem to be fewer men who can dance at every ball you go to,' said one of the girls. "'Yes, and don't the ones who can give themselves airs,' said another; 'they make quite a favor of asking you.'

"'And how stupidly they talk,' added a third. 'They always say exactly the same things: "How charming you are looking to-night." "Do you often go to Vienna? Oh, you should, it's delightful." "What a charming dress you have on." "What a warm day it has been." "Do you like Wagner?" I do wish they'd think of something new.' "'Oh, I never mind how they talk,' said a forth. 'If a man dances well he may be a fool for all I care.' "'He generally is,' slipped in a thin girl, rather spitefully. "'I go to a ball to dance,' continued the previous speaker, not noticing the interruption. 'All I ask is that he shall hold me firmly, take me round steadily, and not get tired before I do.' "'A clockwork figure would be the thing for you,' said the girl who had interrupted. "'Bravo!' cried one of the others, clapping her hands, 'what a capital idea!' "'What's a capital idea?' they asked. "'Why, a clockwork dancer, or, better still, one that would go by electricity and never run down.' "The girls took up the idea with enthusiasm. "'Oh, what a lovely partner he would make,' said one; 'he would never kick you, or tread on your toes.'

In Your Own Words

Piece by piece, you can put together a theme-based summary of this story.

How many times have you've heard someone say, "Everyone knows that...?" Does what "everyone knows" always turn out to be true? Have there been times in your life when "everyone" was wrong? In the short story "Keep Watch," by Alex Myers, two siblings "know" an important piece of information. Read the story to see if the narrator's knowledge and understanding change by the story's end. Then use the following questions to help you prepare your own theme-based summary of the story. When you get to the last question in the question set, copy and paste the answers you wrote into a word processing document. You will need them for the activity later in the lesson.

Keep Watch by Alex Myers On top of the mountain behind our house was a fire tower, its spindly legs rising above the trees. In the evening, the sun would glint off its metal roof: a sharp proclamation of existence that quickly passed. Within, everyone knew, was a lone fire watcher, always on the lookout for that telltale wisp of smoke. Despite the fire tower, every autumn my mother would burn leaves without a permit. First she would strip all the vegetables from her garden, lining up the rows of green tomatoes on the kitchen windowsills. Then my brother and I would rake the lawn. We started with the side lawn, where the two thick birches dropped yellow leaves that quickly turned to brown and the sugar maples shed breathtaking orange leaves—leaves I sometimes felt guilty raking, they were so beautiful. We gathered up big piles, which we raked onto old bed sheets and bundled up. With the sheet sacks on our backs, we rustled our way to the bare garden plot, looking like autumnal Father Christmases, the bulging sacks ridiculously light. The smoke curled up, thick and white. It always seemed sluggish and reluctant to rise at first. My mother tended the flames as my brother and I dragged more sheet-sacks of leaves. Up, up, the smoke would rise, a pillar in the sky, a defiant declaration. Eventually, at some point well before all the leaves were gathered and burned, the Fire Marshal would bump down our driveway in his red Crown Victoria. My mother would wait by her smoldering pile of evidence for him to approach.

“Ma’am,” he’d intone, “do you have a permit to burn these leaves?” “No, I do not,” she’d reply, dry as the autumn air. A sigh, perhaps, as he withdrew his citation book from his shirt pocket, the mumbled exchange as he took her information and delivered a lecture on fire safety before he handed her the ticket and turned to go. My brother and I, embarrassed to be accomplices, stood quietly with our rakes. The fire was doused and my mother worked patiently, turning the ashes of the leaves into the garden's soil, while my brother and I hauled the rest of the leaves into a pile behind the woodshed. It was not hard to get a permit to burn leaves. One simply had to call the fire department of our small town, tell them what day you intended to burn, and assure them that you would tend to the fire. The other houses around us burned their leaves without getting a citation—surely it was not so difficult. There came an autumn when my brother had enough. Perhaps he was tired of standing, embarrassed by his mother’s guilt, as the fire marshal ticketed her, year after year. Or perhaps he had finally reached the stage when he questioned everything my mother did, doubted her authority in every matter. Whatever the case, it was a crisp autumn day that she asked us to rake the lawn. She stood with an armful of zucchini and summer squash, a surprised look on her face as my brother half yelled, half pleaded with her to call, to get a permit.

“You’ll get caught. You always get caught,” he shouted. “They can see the smoke—just look!” His finger pointed to the outline of the fire tower, its peaked roof distant but discernible above the shaggy tops of the pine trees. My mother frowned. “They don’t see anything,” she said. “It’s the neighbor who calls. He’s never liked me.” My brother shook his head, looked at the mountain, its slope green with hemlock and spruce. Around us, leaves fluttered in the air. Wordlessly, my mother carried the vegetables inside. My brother turned, not towards the barn to get a rake, but towards the mountain. His glance swept over me briefly, swept me up beside him. We walked. Through the orchard behind our house, where yellow jackets swarmed on fallen apples, through a field freshly hayed. I wondered if they could see us walking towards them in the tower, if they knew who we were, why we were coming. The hems of our pants got soaked by a marshy field, and then we were among the evergreens at the base of the mountain. I heard my brother breathe steadily, loudly, as the slope grew steeper. Through the woods, I could hear the sound of running water, a stream I could not see. I jogged a bit to keep up with his longer strides. Beneath our feet, the ground was strewn with orange needles. Abruptly, we hit the ridgeline, not the rocky summit of a rugged peak, but the tree-lined top of a lesser mountain. In a small clearing, the four legs of the fire tower stood, splayed and rusty. The weeds grew

thick; my pants brushed against some burrs as we waded across the clearing. My brother reached the ladder that rose between the legs. He did not look up as he climbed, resolutely gripping each rung. My eyes fixed on him, rising up, above the tree tops. He reached the trap door at the center of the tower, raised his fist and knocked hollowly, a booming sound that went unanswered. I heard him knock again, unnecessarily. I stepped back to examine the tower; the windows were boarded up, unseeing. I turned my gaze from my brother as he began to descend, saw that the road to the tower, which snaked its way up the other side of the mountain, was barred by a metal gate. There was no one here. There hadn’t been anyone here for a long time. As my brother walked towards me, I saw that the palms of his hands were stained with rust where he had gripped the unused rungs. I couldn’t meet his gaze. We descended the mountain silently. When we were out of the trees, we could see a column of smoke rising from across the fields, guiding us home.

exit ticket

• What is one strategy you can use to identify a theme in any text, and why does it work?

Well done!

Good Job!