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Although a text may appear to be about events that take place, the themes are the ideas that run throughout. For example, Romeo and Juliet is about two young lovers from opposing families who meet by chance and fall in love. The main theme of the play is fate.

Common themes include:

• power
• love
• money
• death
• appearance and reality
• revenge
• heroism
• technology in society
• friendship
• fate and free will

One of the easiest ways to spot themes is through motifs. A motif is a repeated image or group of images in a text. For example, in Hamlet there is a motif of actors and theatres. This reflects an underlying theme of appearance and reality: in the same way that actors pretend to be different people on stage, some of the characters in Hamlet pretend to be things they are not.

Finding a theme in an extract

It is sometimes difficult to spot a theme in a short extract. You might only be able to say what themes are suggested. When working with a short extract of a fiction text, it helps to look closely at the language to work out the themes.

Example

Look at the opening of Skellig by David Almond, where the narrator finds Skellig for the first time. Try to identify the themes of the larger text.

I found him in the garage on a Sunday afternoon. It was the day after we moved into Falconer Road. The winter was ending. Mum had said we'd be moving just in time for the spring. Nobody else was there. Just me. The others were inside the house with Doctor Death, worrying about the new baby. He was lying there in the darkness behind the tea chests, in the dust and dirt. It was as if he'd been there forever. He was filthy and pale and dried out and I thought he was dead. I couldn't have been more wrong. I'd soon begin to see the truth about him, that there'd never been another creature like him in the world.

Skellig, David Almond

Analysis

There are plenty of hints that death is going to be an important theme in the novel. For example:

• the name of the doctor is ‘Doctor Death’
• Skellig appears to be ‘dead’
• there is also the ‘worry’ about the new baby

However, there are also hints at renewal and life-after-death:

• the family have moved ‘just in time for the spring’, a season of renewal
• Skellig seems to have been there ‘forever’

The images and word choices in this opening paragraph suggest that a major theme in this book will be life and death.

Working out the themes of a text is an act of inference. You can make links between the themes of a text to the characters, the setting and the language.

Don’t confuse the topic with the theme. For example the topic of a text could be two friends travelling around looking for work on ranches, but the themes might be friendship and the pointlessness of dreams (Of Mice and Men).