Theme is a mysterious and often misunderstood term. Simply put, a theme is a unifying or dominant idea explored in a work of art. You’ll see themes show up in music, visual art, and all manner of creative expressions. In this article, I will focus on theme in literature.
How do you identify a theme in literature, or even in your own writing? Perhaps you have a great premise or an interesting plot, but you’re not quite sure what the story is actually about. Let’s look at what makes a compelling theme in literature, and explore the steps required to identify and dramatize the theme of your own story.
Theme in literature is the unifying, universal idea a story explores through character, conflict, and transformation. By dramatizing a moral or existential dilemma rather than stating an argument outright, you can create meaning that resonates beyond your pages.
Why do we write?
As writers we are often drawn to express something that begins as nothing more than an ineffable impulse, something within that needs to be explored. If this rings true for you, this impulse is the key to finding your theme.
To quote William Faulkner: “The problems of the human heart in conflict with [itself] alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.”
After the agony and sweat subsides, the pages we have written remain. And if we’ve done our job well, we have woven character and plot together to create a story where they are working seamlessly in service to the theme.
Make it universal
While it’s true that it’s better to invest in your retirement account at a young age, or that good hygiene habits are a big part of stable mental health, these truths are not rich enough to drive your narrative.
For a strong theme in literature, you’re looking for (borrowing from Faulkner again):
…the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until [the writer lets go of their fear], [they labor] under a curse. [They write] not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. [Their] griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. [They write] not of the heart but of the glands.
In other words, themes are universal truths. They are what unite us all, and make the personal events in your story universally relatable.
When you think in terms of universal truths, you must explore the primal drives that connect us as human beings, such as the desire for freedom, success, belonging, connection, meaning, purpose, security, survival, or justice.
“To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on the flea, though many there be that have tried it.”
– Herman Melville
Story is an argument
A theme is explored through a dramatic question, such as:
- “How can one be free?”
- “What does it mean to be successful?”
- “What is justice?”
It’s important to remember that the purpose of story is to reveal a transformation. And a transformation cannot happen without your protagonist reframing their goal, and thus seeing or understanding their situation in a new way. If all that happens in your story is that your protagonist gets what they want, your reader will be disappointed. Story is not about your protagonist achieving their goal, but rather, arriving at a new understanding of what it means to get what they want.
While a writer likely holds strong convictions on their theme, they must be willing to play both sides of the argument with equal integrity. It is in this way that the story can build in meaning and lead us to a compelling and new understanding of the theme.
Here are some examples:
- Animal Farm – We get a sense of Orwell’s argument by the way he depicts the end of the revolution. The revolutionaries become the oppressors, saying to each other: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
- East of Eden – Steinbeck seems to believe that we are not destined to be good or evil. Instead, the choice is up to each individual. We see his argument most clearly in the ending of the story as Adam refuses to absolve his son of sin or condemn him for it. Instead, he leaves the choice to him, reaffirming Steinbeck’s view on free will.
The key is to weave your theme through your story by dramatizing it as a dilemma besetting your protagonist.
If you’re too upfront, too “preachy” on a topic, you might be writing a manifesto instead of a magnum opus. On the other hand, being too unbiased or even-handed with a theme takes the drama out of it, and it is only through conflict and action that meaning gets revealed.
As Ray Bradbury puts it:
Thomas Wolfe ate the world and vomited lava. Dickens dined
at a different table every hour of his life. Molière, tasting society,
turned to pick up his scalpel, as did Pope and Shaw. Everywhere
you look in the literary cosmos, the great ones are busy loving and
hating. Have you given up this primary business as obsolete in
your own writing? What fun you are missing, then. The fun of
anger and disillusion, the fun of loving and being loved, of moving
and being moved by this masked ball which dances us from cradle
to churchyard.
Some questions are too big to answer, even in a big book. Don’t feel pressure to put a “fresh spin” on something if you don’t have a clear idea of it. There are plenty of themes that will always be relevant.
In literature’s hall of fame, The Brothers Karamazov is one attempt to approach existential questions such as the existence of the divine and its relation to humanity. Dostevsky, notably, doesn’t have a clear answer to the issues he raises in the book. Instead, through the arguments that the characters have and the choices they make, he digs into the many ways that people feel about divinity.
Your theme is within
We’re all witnesses to and participants in the game of life. To join the ranks of your favorite writers, you have to pass the test that they did — you have to dive deep into yourself.
Let’s not forget that writing is fundamentally an act of bravery. It means revisiting wounds and feelings that the sane would leave buried.
As Arthur Whaley says in his book Zen Buddhism and Its Relation to Art: “Art was regarded as a kind of Zen, as a delving down into the Buddha that each of us unknowingly carries within him, as Benjamin carried Joseph’s cup in his sack.”
When you’re in the flow of writing, time seems to stop and all but the imagination disappears. In the best of cases, even you momentarily vanish as the last obstacle between the page and the mind.
For this to happen, what you’re writing about has to be important to you. There have to be stakes and real feelings about what you’re expressing.
Writing, when done with an open heart, is an adventure into the self. If you’re writing for yourself, to satisfy some ache or rectify something that you’ve been mulling over, that’s a good sign that you’re onto your theme.
As you turn to your next draft, take the risk and be brave.
Your story weapon: Make it primal
Despite all the words we’ve invented, across countless languages, they’re still not enough to describe our human experience. To communicate something rich and specific, to leave a bit of your soul on the page, you need a strong core for your story. That core comes through your theme.
When a reader closes a book and keeps thinking about it days or years later, it’s rarely because of a clever twist or beautiful sentence standing alone. It’s because the story wrestled with something true. This could be something unresolved in ourselves, whether it’s unsettling or deeply familiar. Universal themes are the reason stories survive through time.
You don’t need to solve the great questions of existence to write meaningfully. You only need to approach them honestly. Whether your story argues for hope or despair, freedom or fate, love or self-preservation, what matters is that it means something to you. Readers can sense when a writer is engaged in a genuine struggle, and it captures their attention as they want to find out more.
So as you write, don’t ask whether your theme is original enough or impressive enough. Ask whether it’s alive. Make it primal! Ask whether it scares you a little to explore it. Ask whether you care enough to follow it wherever it leads, even if the answers are unclear to you at first.
In the end, your theme is your sharpest tool. It’s how you reach the heart of your reader and cut through the noise, distraction, and spectacle. Wield it with courage and curiosity and your story will have a chance to live.
If you are ready to move beyond plot and premise and engage more deeply with the ideas driving your work, join one of my next writing workshops: The 90-Day Novel or The 90-Day Memoir. I’ll show you how theme emerges through character, choice, and conflict, and help you craft stories that are both emotionally compelling and resonant.
