Themes? We don’t need no stinking themes.
No, John Huston never used that line in one of his movies. But the iconic line about badges from his screenplay for Treasure of the Sierra Madre reflects one of the themes of the movie, namely the lawless character of the frontier.
Huston was a smart guy. He knew that stories need themes. In fact, the theme is the soul of the story.
When I first started writing these monthly columns, I was full of ideas for topics. But you can only write about free indirect discourse or the singular they so many times before these ideas become stale. That’s where you, the readers, come in.
Last month I got a great suggestion. A reader wrote to me saying she had difficulties with themes in her fiction and wondered if I could write about that.
The first thing that occurred to me was to just create a list of possible themes. You know. Things like love, death, family, and so on. A better list might be one that listed conflicts. Things like good versus evil, duty versus honor, change versus tradition. It’s not hard to come up with lists like this. Google “themes in literature” and you’ll get over a billion hits. Too many to be useful. I wasn’t thinking properly about the reader’s question.
So what is the question?
I think what that reader was really asking me was how to connect the theme to the story.
That’s trickier. How do we come up with lines like the one Huston used in Treasure of the Sierra Madre? Huston was certainly a genius, but mere mortals can do this, too–perhaps with less panache, but we can do it. It just takes thinking things through. It also helps to be willing to go back and tweak your initial drafts. There are some basic ideas to keep in mind as you do this, and that’s what this newsletter is about.
Lists like you find in a Google search just give examples of themes. However useful these examples might be, a list is not a definition.
What is a theme, anyway?
Sure, the theme is the soul of the story, but that’s too general to be helpful. To answer the question about connecting theme and story, we need to first ask, “what is a theme, anyway?” We need a working definition.
Here’s one from Sara Letourneau that is both precise and helpful.
A theme is an idea, concept, or lesson that appears repeatedly throughout a story, reflects the character’s internal journey through the external plot, and resonates with the reader.
There’s a lot to unpack in that definition. First, it supposes a character arc—an internal journey during which the character changes over the course of the story. It further supposes that the events in the plot cause, or at least coincide with, the character arc. Finally, it supposes that the reader connects with the character.
A less abstract version is that there is a life lesson the character needs to learn. The readers need to like the character enough to care about whether or not she succeeds–to cheer for her. The character resists learning the lesson, which leads to conflict. Conflict leads to plot. This conflict repeats over and over again in the story, with escalating stakes. The ultimate resolution of the conflict occurs at the climax, when everything is on the line, and the character learns (or does not learn) the lesson.
Examples
Think about The Wizard of Oz. The main theme is easy: there’s no place like home. At the start, Dorothy wishes she were anywhere except home. Then a whirlwind whisks her away to Oz. Once there, she wants to return to Kansas, even though she hates the place. She meets other characters. They all need things, too, and those needs coincide with other themes in the story. The things that the Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man need are all things Dorothy also needs in her quest to escape Oz. Ultimately, though, these don’t matter. She can’t return home until she learns the basic lesson of the theme. Then her goal is just a click of her heels away.
For another example, consider The Maltese Falcon. If you haven’t read the novel by Dashiell Hammett, the movie is available online and is worth watching. As an author, the lessons you’ll learn relate to connecting theme, character, and plot.
Hammett’s novel has many themes. On one level, it’s an exposition on the importance of having a strong personal code of ethics in a world lacking both ethics and the ability to catch the real criminals. But the strong underlying life lesson that the protagonist, Sam Spade, learns is the corrupting influence of greed.
Greed animates all of the characters in the novel. Spade is always on the lookout to make a quick buck, and he’s not picky about how he does it. His erstwhile client, Brigid, has killed Spade’s partner and double-crossed her own accomplice-in-greed to acquire the eponymous Falcon. Casper Gutman, played brilliantly by Sydney Greenstreet in the movie, represents the ultimate in greed. His compatriots call him “Mr. G” because of his copious gut, thus conflating greed and gluttony. His jewel-studded pistol also represents his greed, and further suggests a connection between greed and violence. Gutman even betrays his surrogate son (and possible lover) in his quest for the Falcon. The connections between the theme, the characters, and the plot are both obvious and pervasive.
But Spade’s character arc reflects the theme and the plot as well. Early on, his office assistant, Effie Perine, tells Spade she’ll never respect him if he accepts money without offering to help Brigid. She’s symbolically representing Spade’s conscience. Eventually, he’s offered and even accepts a bribe from Gutman. Ultimately, he turns the bribe over to the police to use as evidence against Gutman, closing his character arc by refusing, at least in this instance, his greedy impulses and acting for the greater good. He’s learned the life lesson.
The Falcon itself is a crucial element of the story. All the characters are convinced that it’s the source of the ultimate in untold riches. But in the end, it turns out to have no value at all. The Falcon is a metaphor for the futility of greed—even if you attain the goal, it will be of no value.
Working backwards, it’s not hard to spot the ways that Hammett connects his theme to Spade’s internal journey and to the events of the plot. Spade himself is a quirky, underdog character readers want to identify with and cheer for. Hammett’s theme fits the above definition nicely.
How’d they do it?
You might wonder if Hammett had all of this in place when he started writing. We can’t ask him, so we’ll never know. But he didn’t have to have these ideas in place when he started writing. More likely, he was initially just interested in writing a gripping detective novel. He might have had “greed” as one of several themes, or maybe he just wanted to write about an underdog detective working in a corrupt and incompetent system. He could have discovered the theme of greed in the course of writing the story, and then reinforced it in subsequent revisions.
I know that when I write a novel, I have a general idea of the themes I want to cover. But at the start, I don’t know my characters, and only have a general idea of the plot. I learn about my characters as I write them, and the life lessons they need to learn become apparent in the creative process. That sets up their character arcs and influences how the plot develops.
Other authors have different methods. There are plotters, people who start with fully developed character sketches and detailed plot outlines. Then there are pantsers, people who write by the seat of their pants. I’m firmly in the latter category. There’s nothing wrong with either method—most people are probably a mix of the two. Pick whatever method works for you.
Your characters and your plot give you opportunities to show links to the theme. Your job is to find and highlight them. Don’t preach, show. Connecting your themes with your story involves showing the theme in action. It’s the words and deeds of the characters that bring the story and its themes to life.
That synthesis, that bringing together of character, plot, and theme, that’s the soul of the story.
Be First to Comment