Themes

What is a theme?

In literature, a theme is an idea or message that keeps on appearing in a story. Usually, a theme, or themes, is carefully selected by an author in order to communicate to the reader an idea or message of their choice.  

For example, the author might want to communicate the theme of love, war, growing up or revenge to their reader. To do this, they would need to think carefully about the events in their story and what might happen to their characters in order to show their chosen theme to the reader. 

Let's think back to the Beowulf story by Michael Morpurgo. 

I think there were many themes running throughout this story such as fear, bravery and good vs. evil. 

Why do I think there was a theme of fear running throughout this story?

1) Grendel was attacking Heorot every night and killing King

   Hrothgar's people.

2) Everybody in Heorot feared Grendel as they didn't know how to

   stop him.

3) King Hrothgar's people could not sleep at night because of

   Grendel.

4) King Hrothgar feared the death of all his men which is why he

   asked for help from Beowulf.

5) When Beowulf and his soldiers arrived, they knew they could die

   and feared Grendel's attack even though they knew they had to

   challenge him.

Your Task

Read the two short stories below and choose one of the themes from the list that you think is shown in each story.

Then, you need to explain why you think that theme is being shown. 

Log onto Seesaw to complete this task. 

Activity Name: Identifying themes in texts