What's Theme?
I emphasized in the title Novel's Theme, however in this section of the article I will talk about Theme in general first, then I will talk about Theme in relation to the Novel.
Let's see what dictionaries and many websites tell us about theme
The subject or main idea in a talk, piece of writing or work of art.
What exactly is this elusive thing called theme? The theme of a fable is its moral. The theme of a parable is its teaching. The theme of a piece of fiction is its view about life and how people behave. In fiction, the theme is not intended to teach or preach. In fact, it is not presented directly at all. You extract it from the characters, action, and setting that make up the story. In other words, you must figure out the theme yourself. The writer's task is to communicate on a common ground with the reader. Although the particulars of your experience may be different from the details of the story, the general underlying truths behind the story may be just the connection that both you and the writer are seeking.
[Learner Org.]That's an interesting explanation; quite simple therefore quite generalizing. In this explanation, we are been told what a theme becomes in what form of literature, how writers use themes, what to do with a theme. We are still not told that how to identify a theme, and what are the components of a theme, and that what makes theme a Theme. Let's try Wikipedia:
In contemporary literary studies, a theme is the central topic a text treats.Themes can be divided into two categories: a work's thematic concept is what readers "think the work is about" and its thematic statement being "what the work says about the subject". The most common contemporary understanding of theme is an idea or point that is central to a story, which can often be summed in a single word (e.g. love, death, betrayal). Typical examples of themes of this type are conflict between the individual and society; coming of age; humans in conflict with technology; nostalgia; and the dangers of unchecked ambition.A theme may be exemplified by the actions, utterances, or thoughts of a character in a novel. An example of this would be the theme loneliness in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, wherein many of the characters seem to be lonely. It may differ from the thesis—the text's or author's implied worldview. A story may have several themes. Themes often explore historically common or cross-culturally recognizable ideas, such as ethical questions, and are usually implied rather than stated explicitly. An example of this would be whether one should live a seemingly better life, at the price of giving up parts of one's humanity, which is a theme in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Along with plot, character, setting, and style, theme is considered one of the components of fiction.
Wikipedia has made a good effort to explore the word "theme" as it tells us about the origins ("conflict between the individual and the society, coming of age..."), it tells us about the trick to identify the theme that if a story can "be summed in a single word (e.g. love, death, betrayal)" then that story has a theme, and then Wikipedia gives us an example. It seems like everything has been explained about theme, now. Everything is going smooth and sound.But, what if I say that a theme has neither a direct relation with the text (as structuralists propose) nor with reader's understanding (as Reader-response theorists believe), then what would you say? What if I say that a theme emerges not out of visually observable words, rather rather they emerge from the feelable emotions and invisible ideas - the two entities that are highly subjective and exist nowhere, but in mind? What's your take on this?
If you say that theme comes out of words or text, then you might also know that "Just-the-Text" approach is limited to the 'textual reference' - it is really limited, using it we cannot see beyond the described things; whereas, we are having every year a new journal, a new research paper, a new dissertation, on Shakespeare's 400 years old literature? Why? Has somebody added new words into the text? The Text has already been there for centuries, why not then the themes that we are discovering today were found 400 years ago? If text says it all, then why the story of a great fiction remains untold?
The theme in a story is its underlining message, or 'big idea.' In other words, what critical belief about life is the author trying to convey in the writing of a novel, play, short story or poem? This belief, or idea, transcends cultural barriers. It is usually universal in nature. When a theme is universal, it touches on the human experience, regardless of race or language. It is what the story means. Often, a piece of writing will have more than one theme...
...Take Golding's The Lord of the Flies, for example. We know that Golding taught in a boys' school and later fought in WWII. He writes, 'I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.' In The Lord of the Flies, Golding took his belief about evil being resident in the human heart, even in children, and set about to prove this by placing young boys on a deserted island. If they were good at heart and only corrupted by their environment, then the boys would be well-behaved. But, if they were bent toward evil, the result would be chaos. Chaos wins. Thus, a deeper meaning in The Lord of the Flies would be that man is capable of evil and that evil dwells in the human heart. Whether or not the reader agrees with Golding's analysis, this novel will most likely always be considered an enduring classic because of its depth of meaning.
[http://goo.gl/LPqrcG]
A common thread or repeated idea that is incorporated throughout a literary work. A theme is a thought or idea the author presents to the reader that may be deep, difficult to understand, or even moralistic. Generally, a theme has to be extracted as the reader explores the passages of a work. The author utilizes the characters, plot, and other literary devices to assist the reader in this endeavor. One theme that may be extracted by the reader of Mark Musa’s interpretation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy Volume I: Inferno is the need to take account of one’s own behavior now, for it affects one's condition in the afterlife.
[http://goo.gl/lxbdpb]
Theme is Inferred, not Discovered
I hold this to be true that themes are not discovered in the text. Discovery is an objective approach towards text; as if something was already present in the text and you just found it. It's not like that. Theme is not there in the text as a concentrate solitary presence - it's there as sublime prevalence. The very fact of Theme's being a concentrate presence is the attestation of the author's guilt to artificial artistry. No doubt, the author when writes, has an Intention behind it, has some information or some concept in his mind -- he is in very special frame of mind in which he designs his novel - there is no doubt in it; but, none of these expressions "concept", "intention", "information" or "frame of mind" stand as synonyms to the word "Theme". Only a very introspective, and perhaps an artificial writer, would deliberately try to incorporate "theme" into his work of fiction. Genuine writers do not write with the intention of creating academic attention towards their work - they write to convey, they write because they feel themselves being written in words when they write something, they write because they enjoy the act of creation. No painter on earth paints red colour on his canvas while thinking "oh, I should put some red, it will be the symbolic representation of violence". A painter might probably think while putting the red on the canvas is "Oh, this will be beautiful! Exactly what I felt about it". He does so not because he is trying to reflect his society through colours (society is automatically reflected in his painting). He does so because he himself is an expression of the society!
Themes are not incorporated by a genuine writer - situations, emotions, thoughts, messages, conflicts - everything is incorporated, except themes. It's not that a tree "incorporate" tissues on its stem, it's not the choice of tree - it's the part of its nature to have tissues. A tree might not even know that what it consists of. It's the job of a scientist to see the composition. Similarly, a genuine writer does not incorporate Theme into his writing - it's the part of his nature. He may not even have the slightest idea. It's the job of a critic to see the composition. And, if you are trying to know the Theme, you are a Critic - a technical guy (if not a creative).
By the way, you might be thinking, how dare he to separate the word "theme" from the creative process! Or someone else be thinking, how stupid Hassan is to defamiliarize such a familiar word!
Well, I do this on technical grounds. A scientist does not need to be a tree to study a tree. A critic does not necessarily need to be a writer to be a critic.
When we say "the theme of the fiction", we are talking about a technical (if not scientific) process that is involved in identifying the Hidden messages in the apparent words, the messages that are both from the writer and from the Age of the writer, even from the Society of the writer and from the collective unconscious of the writer. Theme is a hidden message, a covert idea or thought -- and sometimes, certain components of the story that combine to form a semantic pattern. To put it simple, Theme is a projection of the reader's mind while he reads. And only the words of a powerful writer are capable enough to project the reader's mind the way his own mind projects towards what he is writing.
To feel an emotion you need not to be scientific, to understand a situation you need no to be a Sherlock Holmes, to understand a concept you need to be a John Nash - but to find a pattern and infer the meanings and its relations, you need to be everything - a scientist, a scholar, a detective, a critic, a thinker, a writer and an artist.
To feel an emotion you need not to be scientific, to understand a situation you need no to be a Sherlock Holmes, to understand a concept you need to be a John Nash - but to find a pattern and infer the meanings and its relations, you need to be everything - a scientist, a scholar, a detective, a critic, a thinker, a writer and an artist.
Theme is Inferred, and Partly Discovered
Theme is inferred by linking up the recurrent patterns in the character actions (physical or abstract) to form one grand pattern. When a grand pattern is discovered, we are only then able to infer a theme. A pattern when discovered can be interpreted in many ways, and this is where diversity of themes arises. To illustrate what I wrote above, refer to this sequence:
•Discover Pattern in Actions ► Interpret the Pattern ► Infer the Theme
•Discover Pattern in Intentions (causes of Action) ► Interpret the Pattern ► Infer the Theme
Intentions (causes of Action) are of two types: the one that writer himself tells you by some means, and the other that you yourself deduce. In both cases, when all the similar Intentions are linked up, a Pattern is created. You then make an opinion about the pattern by the "over-all meaning of all the linked intentions ". The opinion or the idea, that you specify for the Pattern you just created is the Theme.
That was just about theme, let's now focus on the theme of the novel.
The Novel's Theme
< coming soon;-) >
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