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How to identify theme

- Another approach

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTKnoCWK-wc

1. What is theme?

A message that the author wants you to understand; a truth or insight about people or life that the author wants you to understand.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTKnoCWK-wc

However….

Theme is not just about the characters or the story itself.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTKnoCWK-wc

A theme needs to be…

a universal truth. It needs to be able to work for another story or book.

It is abstract, an idea that can be applied to you, to me, to anyone.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTKnoCWK-wc

Example: Finding Nemo

What is the story about?

It is about Nemo finding his way home.

**This is not theme because it includes character and plot, so we must think about what topic is addressed in this movie. This will help us discover the theme of the book.**

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTKnoCWK-wc

Topic

The topic of a book is usually expressed in 1 word that applies to a story and is an abstract noun. Some common topics in books are:

Love

Courage

Trust

Friendship

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTKnoCWK-wc

One topic of Finding Nemo:

Friendship

Now that we have a topic of Finding Nemo, we can think about how the topic (friendship) helped the character in the story.

How did friendship help Nemo to grow and change?

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTKnoCWK-wc

How did friendship help Nemo grow and change?

Friendship helped Nemo to find his way back to his family. That made him happy.

To make this into a theme statement, we need to remove references to the character and plot and turn it into a general statement about life. You should be able to apply the theme statement you create to another book and still have it make sense.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTKnoCWK-wc

A theme statement for Finding Nemo could be…

Friendship can lead to happiness.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTKnoCWK-wc

Here are some topics/ themes we discovered in

our book, Fox.