Themes

• Themes are important ideas and meanings that run throughout a text, such as the loss of innocence and conflict between violence and reason.
• Common themes in fiction include power, love, money, death, appearance and reality, heroism, technology in society, and friendship.
• Motifs, repeated images or ideas, can help develop themes, such as violence and identity in novels.
• Identifying themes in extracts is crucial for understanding the text's overall meaning.
• Motif- a recurring idea or theme in a piece of music.
• What is a theme?

  Themes are key ideas 
• What is the name given to a repeated image or a group of images in a text?

  A motif
• What can you examine closely to help identify themes in shorter texts?

  language, setting and character 
• What themes are suggested by the following extract from Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea?

  The shark swung over and the old man saw his eye was not alive and then he swung over once again, wrapping himself in two loops of the rope. The old man knew that he was dead but the shark would not accept it. Then, on his back, with his tail lashing and his jaws clicking, the shark plowed over the water as a speedboat does.

  Man and Nature