What's so important about the theme of a story?

This week, students learned about the importance of the theme(s) in novels and writing.  After having finished reading the novel Eleven by Tom Rodgers, students extended their thinking even further through theme analysis. 

We discussed theme as the message the author wants to convey to its readers and which appears repeatedly throughout the story.  It's a broad idea that can be applied to life and usually not explicitly stated in the text.  Instead, the theme(s) must be inferred by the reader and derived by reasoning. Theme helps a good story become a compelling one. It ties the protagonist's internal journey to the external plot, while giving readers something to care about and someone to root for. What happens when that link is missing? What if the protagonist doesn’t have a goal to strive for? You’d have a plot that goes nowhere and readers losing interest. Themes allow readers to relate to the characters and their struggles and to feel invested in the outcome (and oh, how your children were thoroughly invested in the outcome of Eleven). This was a great mentor text for my students - a perfect model for their own narrative writing journeys this term.

As a culminating activity, students created iMovie book theme trailers, which were presented this afternoon. Here are just a few of the relevant and interesting themes students inferred from the story, as conveyed through their trailers:  "Better to light a candle than curse the darkness", Kindness doesn't cost anything", Sometimes what you already have is more important than what you want" and "Sometimes something really good can come out of something really bad". Such positive messages from such deep thinkers!