ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
Young Adult: Themes 1211 Views
Share It!
Description:
Everything you read has a theme. Even this blurb has a theme. What is it? If we told you, you might not be curious enough to watch this video, and that would be a shame because we worked really, really hard on it.
Transcript
- 00:00
Themes, a la Shmoop. What if a theme park… was really a theme
- 00:11
park?
- 00:12
You could ride a roller coaster that explores the loss of innocence.
- 00:16
Or take a terrifying ride up the Tower of Cultural Diversity.
- 00:19
Or maybe even go for a spin in the Teacups of Separation and Loss.
Full Transcript
- 00:25
Yeah, so maybe themes are better suited to stories and essays than amusement park rides.
- 00:30
At least you don’t have to be a certain height to read a book. Usually.
- 00:35
A theme is, quite simply, the central idea explored in any piece of writing.
- 00:40
You need a theme; otherwise… what’s the purpose of writing anything at all?
- 00:45
You’d just be left with a story that meanders between completely unrelated characters or
- 00:50
plot points…
- 00:50
…or a paper that ambles from one disjointed argument to another.
- 00:54
Your teachers have read stuff like that… trust us. They’re not superfans.
- 00:59
Okay, so… that definition of the word is a fairly broad one.
- 01:05
We can narrow our focus a bit by concentrating on universal themes.
- 01:09
A universal theme is one that pops up so often in many different books…
- 01:15
…that it must be a concept that people are wrestling with in some way.
- 01:19
Good versus Evil… and Coming of Age… are two universal themes, for example.
- 01:25
The theme of… carrots being difficult to eat…
- 01:28
…well, that one doesn’t get a lot of play.
- 01:31
In fact, we’re pretty sure you’re the only one who’s having that problem.
- 01:37
Not universal. A couple of biggies are Individual versus
- 01:42
Society…
- 01:43
…and Individual versus Self. Individual versus Society comes up whenever
- 01:50
there’s a struggle between what an individual wants…
- 01:52
…and what society demands of him.
- 01:55
Like… if someone is passionately opposed to wearing pants in public.
- 02:00
Individual versus Self involves a similar struggle…
- 02:03
…but one that is taking place within the individual.
- 02:07
There probably isn’t a character with any self-imposed pant-wearing laws…
- 02:11
…but… say there’s a character who has dreams of moving to the big city to try to
- 02:15
become a professional triangle player…
- 02:18
…but she’s not sure they can bear to leave their small town behind.
- 02:27
No one is forcing them to do one thing or the other…
- 02:29
…society’s demands have nothing to do with it…
- 02:32
…it’s completely a personal decision. And all of the turmoil comes from within.
- 02:38
These are just a couple of examples.
- 02:40
As long as you can find a few million people concerned about a given topic…
- 02:45
…you’ve got yourself a universal theme.
- 02:51
And good luck with the carrot thing.
- 02:52
That’s gotta be rough.
- 02:53
Especially with it being… roughage.
Up Next
Dr. Seuss was a failure to start, but he soon learned to follow his heart. He wrote books about things that he knew, and soon enough, his book sale...
Related Videos
Sure, Edgar Allan Poe was dark and moody and filled with teenage angst, but what else does he have in common with the Twilight series?
Emily Dickinson was a New England poet/hermit with a fascination with death and immortality. She wrote over 1000 poems in her lifetime, most of the...
