Theme in Literature

Definition

Theme refers to the general topic or subject, or the main idea in a literary work such as, a story, an essay, or a narrative. Some common examples of themes include: love, friendship, war, crime, punishment, death, revenge, nature, isolation, etc.

Characteristics

The basic characteristics of a theme could be outlined as under:

• It acts as a framework for the entire literary piece.
• It is a distinct, recurring, and unifying quality or idea.
• It is usually universal in nature.
• Generally conveys a moral or message about society, life or human nature.
• Stated either direct or indirect manner.
• Theme is abstract in nature.
•  A theme does not necessarily need to be true in the real world.
• Theme binds together everything: the characters, the plot and the setting.

Components

A theme has two components namely, the thematic concept and the thematic statement. The thematic concept simply refers to the subject or topic of the work, while the thematic statement refers to what the author remarks or opines about that subject. The thematic concept thus is usually an abstract element, like “transgression” or “atonement”, while the thematic statement is generally the concretization of that abstract idea through images, setting, and most commonly through the characters’ actions, words, and thoughts. Whereas the former is expressed in word or phrase level, the latter is expressed in a sentence and is often a general statement about society, life or human nature.

Types of Themes

Themes are of two types: major themes and minor themes.  A Major theme is an idea which is repeated or given prominence throughout the story. Hence it acts as the central driving force in a literary work. A minor theme, on the other hand, is an idea that occurs for a short period. It is of less significance and usually appears for part of the story only to be replaced by another minor theme.

For instance, Saul Bellow’s Seize the Day (1956) consists of the following major and minor themes:

Major Themes

• Alienation.
• Meaningless of Life.
• Affirmation of Human Life.

Minor Themes

• Deceit.
• Conflict between Father and Son.
• Conflict between Husband and Wife.

Determining a Theme

A literary work may comprise more than one theme. The writer himself may infuse his work with multiple themes. Again, the same work may produce other themes due to reader’s individualistic way of interpretation. It is indeed, very hard to stipulate any specific yardstick for identifying a theme. This statement is very logical when we compare it with the point of individualistic interpretation as stated earlier. However, we can still try to identify themes by the following ways:

• Studying character’s dialogues.
• Studying character’s thoughts and feelings.
• Studying character's actions, beliefs, etc.
• Studying specific events and contexts.
• Studying character’s change in mood and attitude.
• Studying the author's background.
• Identifying the main topics or subjects.
• Analyzing the title of the work.
• Determining the imagery, motifs, figure of speech, etc.
• Identifying the presence of any universal topics, such as human struggle and so the like.

 

 

 

References

Gupta, A.N. and Satis Gupta. A Dictionary of English Literature. 2^nd ed. Bareilly: PBD, 1995

Griffith, Benjamin W. A Pocket Guide to Literature and Language Terms. Newyork: Barron's, 1976

“Theme”. Literary Terms. 2016. Literary Terms. 15 July 2016 < http://literaryterms.net/theme/>.

" Theme (narrative)”. Wikipedia. 2016. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. 15 July 2016

< https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_(narrative)>.

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D.H. Lawrence Quick Facts

D.H. Lawrence

20^th century English novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright, and literary critic, best known for his 1928 infamous novel Lady Chatterley's Lover.

Profile

• Birth Name: David Herbert Richards Lawrence
• AKA: D.H.  Lawrence
• Date of Birth: 11 September 1885
• Place of Birth: Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England, United Kingdom
• Zodiac Sign: Virgo
• Death: 2 March 1930
• Place of Death: Vence, France
• Cause of Death: Tuberculosis
• Ethnicity: White
• Nationality: British
• Place of Burial: Chapel East of Taos, New Mexico (Ashes)
• Last Words: “I’m getting better.”
• Epitaph: “Homo sum! the adventurer.”
• Father: Arthur John Lawrence (1847 - 1924)
• Mother: Lydia Lawrence (née Beardsall) (1852 - 1910)
• Siblings:

1. Brother- George Lawrence (1876 – 1967)

2. Brother- William Ernest Lawrence (1878 -1901)

3. Sister- Emily Una Lawrence (1882 -1962)

4. Sister- Lettice Ada Lawrence (1887 – 1948)

• Spouse: Frieda Lawrence (née von Richthofen) (b. 1879 - d. 1956; m. 1914 to until his demise)
• Children: None
• Alma Mater: University College of Nottingham, Nottingham High School
• Known for: linguistic precision, mastery of a wide range of subject matters and genres, psychological complexity and exploration of female sexuality
• Criticized for: presenting controversial themes with graphic and highly sexual content
• Influences: Herman Melville (1819 –1891), Walt Whitman (1819 –1892), Thomas Hardy (1840 –1928), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 –1900), Sigmund Freud (1856 –1939), Ezra Pound (1885 –1972), Joseph Conrad (1857 –1924), Henri Bergson (1859–1941), Otto Gross (1877–1920), E.M. Forster (1879 – 1970), and Aldous Huxley (1894 –1963)
• Influenced: Harriet Monroe (1860 –1936), Amy Lowell (1874 –1925), Meridel LeSueur (1900–1996), Elizabeth Bishop (1911 –1979), Tennessee Williams (1911 –1983), Carson McCullers (1917 –1967), Karl Shapiro (1913 –2000), Denise Levertov (1923 –1997), Robert Bly (b. 1926), Galway Kinnell (1927 –2014), Adrienne Rich (1929 –2012), and Ted Hughes (1930 –1998)

Quotes

“But that is how men are! Ungrateful and never satisfied. When you don't have them they hate you because you won't; and when you do have them they hate you again, for some other reason. Or for no reason at all, except that they are discontented children, and can't be satisfied whatever they get, let a woman do what she may.” D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“So as long as you can forget your body you are happy and the moment you begin to be aware of your body, you are wretched. So if civilization is any good, it has to help us forget our bodies, and then time passes happily without our knowing it. Help us get rid of our bodies altogether.” D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover

“He always ran away from the battle with himself. Even in his own heart's privacy, he excused himself, saying, "If she hadn't said so-and-so, it would never have happened.” D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers

Major Themes

• Male-Female Relationship
• Human Psyche
• Love and Sex
• Class Barriers
• Homosexuality
• Misogyny
• The Working Class
• Technology and Modernization
• Leadership

Notable Works

Novels

• The White Peacock (1911)
• The Trespasser (1912)
• Sons and Lovers (1913)
• The Rainbow (1915)
• Women in Love (1920)
• The Lost Girl (1920)
• Aaron's Rod (1922)
• Kangaroo (1923)
• The Boy in the Bush (1924)
• The Plumed Serpent (1926)
• Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)
• The Escaped Cock (1929)
• The Man Who Died (1929)
• The Virgin and the Gypsy (1930)

Short stories

• The Prussian Officer and Other Stories (1914)
• England, My England and Other Stories (1922)
• The Fox, The Captain's Doll,The Ladybird (1923)
• St Mawr and other stories (1925)
• The Woman who Rode Away and other stories (1928)
• The Virgin and the Gipsy and Other Stories (1930)
• Love Among the Haystacks and other stories (1930)
• Collected Stories (1994)

Poetry

• Love Poems and others (1913)
• Amores (1916)
• Look! We have come through! (1917)
• New Poems (1918)
• Bay: a book of poems (1919)
• Tortoises (1921)
• Birds, Beasts and Flowers (1923)
• The Collected Poems of D H Lawrence (1928)
• Pansies (1929)
• Nettles (1930)
• Last Poems (1932)
• Fire and other poems (1940)
• The Complete Poems of D H Lawrence (1964)

Plays

• The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd (1914)
• Touch and Go (1920)
• David (1926)
• The Fight for Barbara (1933)
• A Collier's Friday Night (1934)
• The Married Man (1940)
• The Merry-go-round (1941)
• The Complete Plays of D H Lawrence (1965)

Non-fiction

• Study of Thomas Hardy and other essays (1914)
• Movements in European History (1921)
• Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious and Fantasia of the Unconscious (1921/1922)
• Studies in Classic American Literature (1923)
• Reflections on the Death of a Porcupine and other essays (1925)
• A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover (1929)
• Apocalypse and the writings on Revelation (1931)
• Phoenix: the posthumous papers of D H Lawrence (1936)
• Phoenix II: uncollected, unpublished and other prose works by D H Lawrence (1968)

Travel books

• Twilight in Italy and Other Essays (1916)
• Sea and Sardinia (1921)
• Mornings in Mexico (1927)

Did You Know?

• D. H. Lawrence was the fourth child of the five children of an illiterate coal miner Arthur John Lawrence and his wife Lydia Lawrence, a former school teacher.
• His mother had to manual work in a lace factory in order to support her financially unstable family.
• Lawrence’s mother was from a middle class religious family.
• Lawrence inherited his love for literature from his mother.
• When he was twenty seven, Lawrence fell in love with Frieda Weekley, the wife of Ernest Weekley, his former professor at Nottingham University. Frieda, who was six years older than Lawrence eloped with him to Germany leaving behind her husband and three children. Before returning back to England the couple travelled to Bavaria, Austria, and Italy.
• In Germany Lawrence stayed with Frieda’s parents’ home at Metz, where he was eventually arrested and accused of being a British spy. He was then released following an intervention from Frieda's father.
• Following her divorce from Weekley, Frieda and Lawrence got married at the Kensington's Registrar's Office, in London on 13th July 1914.
• Although the couple intended to return to Italy in August 1914, the outbreak of the First World War confined them in England.
• Leaving post-war England they travelled widely, finally settling at the Kiowa Ranch near Taos, New Mexico due to his continued health decline.
• The Kiowa Ranch is now known as D. H. Lawrence Ranch.
• After Lawrence’s death in Vence, France in 1930, Frieda returned to Taos to live with her third husband, Angelo Ravagli.
• Lawrence was originally buried in the old Vence cemetery, but was exhumed in March 1935. His ashes were then handed over to Angelo Ravagli so that they could be transported to the shrine at Kiowa Ranch, New Mexico.
• There are some speculations that the ashes were dumped by Ravagli somewhere between Marseilles and Villefranche and that he subsequently procured alternative ashes which he eventually took to Taos. Again, another rumor is that that the ashes arrived safely at Kiowa Ranch and Frieda opted to have them added to the concrete of the shrine.
• Only ten people attended D. H. Lawrence’s funeral, one of the notable mourners was his friend Aldous Huxley.
• Before falling in love with Frieda, Lawrence proposed to his college friend Louie Burrows. But he ended the engagement soon after he decided to elope with Frieda.
• Although chiefly venerated as a novelist, Lawrence’s first-published works were poems.
• D.H. Lawrence's first novel The White Peacock was published in 1910.
• Lawrence's mother died of cancer shortly after his first novel was published, with Lawrence reported to have given her an overdose of 'sleeping medicine', to end the pain that she was suffering.
• His quasi-autobiographical novel Sons and Lovers is considered Lawrence’s first great novel which was published in 1913.
• The Rainbow was published in 1915 but was condemned for its sexual content.
• His Lady Chatterley's Lover was published in Italy in 1928, but it was banned in the United States until 1958 due to its graphic sexual content. It was banned in England till 1960, until a jury ruled in favor of Penguin Books. Some feminist critics now claim the novel to be deeply misogynistic, because part of its argument is that women will reach true fulfillment only by submitting themselves to men.
• D.H. Lawrence's birthplace has been transformed into a museum, and has been converted back to how it would have looked when Lawrence was a child.

Photo Gallery

 

References

" D.H. Lawrence.” Wikipedia. 2016. Wikimedia Foundation Inc. 21 June 2016

< https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._H._Lawrence>.

" DH Lawrence.” The Biography.com website. 2016. A&E Television Networks. 21 June 2016

< http://www.biography.com/people/dh-lawrence-17175776>.

" DH Lawrence 1885 - 1930.” Gavin Gillespie. 2014. Gavin Gillespie. 21 June 2016

< http://www.gavingillespie.co.uk/>.

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