#and english classes like to teach kids to find the big broad themes first | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sith-shenanigans · 1 year ago

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[tumblr wouldn’t let me edit only the tags for some reason and i had more to come back and say with them]

"A story doesn't need a theme in order to be good" I'm only saying this once but a theme isn't some secret coded message an author weaves into a piece so that your English teacher can talk about Death or Family. A theme is a summary of an idea in the work. If the story is "Susan went grocery shopping and saw a weird bird" then it might have themes like 'birds don't belong in grocery stores' or 'nature is interesting and worth paying attention to' or 'small things can be worth hearing about.' Those could be the themes of the work. It doesn't matter if the author intended them or not, because reading is collaborative and the text gets its meaning from the reader (this is what "death of the author" means).

Every work has themes in it, and not just the ones your teachers made you read in high school. Stories that are bad or clearly not intended to have deep messages still have themes. It is inherent in being a story. All stories have themes, even if those themes are shallow, because stories are sentences connected together for the purpose of expressing ideas, and ideas are all that themes are.

#i am into themes forever but i regret to say i did Not get that from english classes #looking for single-word predetermined themes was… frequent #(and then i did not do it. and instead wrote an essay about how of mice and men can be about societally-required caretaker neglect)#edit because i have more to say about that—those Are themes they're just not the only kind of themes #like family is a theme! and you can compare how two different works handle that theme #saying that family is a major theme in a work doesn't say much on its own but you can go for further exploration or comparison #and english classes like to teach kids to find the big broad themes first #the problem is. uh. when they stop there. and when they get mad at you for finding unapproved themes #like 'the way people are affected by a lack of support'#and art can only convey what it conveys—its themes may read very differently to different audiences #a theme can be present in a work without the author's intent #especially if you empathize with characters you aren't 'supposed' to empathize with #both broader and narrower themes are good to dig into

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