Elements of a Short Story: Theme

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ELEMENTS OF A SHORT STORY: THEME By: Vanessa Abbott, Cody Beam, Melissa Berndt, and Janethia Washington

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Transcript of Elements of a Short Story: Theme

Page 1: Elements of a Short Story: Theme

ELEMENTS OF A SHORT STORY:

THEME

By: Vanessa Abbott, Cody Beam, Melissa Berndt, and Janethia Washington

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WHAT IS THE IMPORTANCE OF THEME?

As The Norton Introduction to Literature states “Even the most careful and responsive readers will likely disagree about just what the theme is or how best to start it. And each statement of a given theme will imply a slightly different view of what matters most and why.” (Mays, 2013) The theme is the lesson or message that the reader takes from the story and it can be the same or it can be hugely different.

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“THE ONES WHO WALK AWAY FROM OMELAS”

BY URSULA K. LEGUINThere are several themes evident in this short story.

The Scapegoat

Rights of the individual vs. the majority

Good cannot exist without evil

Individual responsibility

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THE SCAPEGOATThe word “scapegoat” is a Biblical term used to describe an animal, usually a goat, who was sacrificed to atone for the sins of a group of people.

The Omelas is a town that seems perfect upon first inspection. However, we are soon invited into the dark underside of this picturesque society. The narrator tells of a child “so thin there are no calves to its legs; its belly protrudes; it lives on a half-bowl of corn meal and grease a day. It is naked. Its buttocks and thighs are a mass of festered sores, as it sits in its own excrement continually.” (LeGuin)

All of the citizens of Omelas are aware that the child exists in this state of misery and abuse, but they allow it to continue. This irrational hostility towards a child who, presumably, has done no wrong is horrific, yet no one does anything.

As long as the child is locked up, the people of the Omelas can lock up their guilt as well. They allow themselves to believe that the price of their happiness is the misery of the child.

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THE RIGHTS OF THE INDIVIDUAL VS. THE MAJORITYLeGuin’s inspiration for “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is this quote from William James in “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”:

[If the] utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a special and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment, when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?

“Some of them understand why, and some do not,

but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery.”(LeGuin)

Another theme represented in “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is the rights of the individual versus the rights of the majority. The citizens of Omelas struggle with this dilemma. “To throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of happiness of one”(LeGuin).

Some of the citizens rage, others cry, but most eventually come to accept the situation and continue to lead happy lives. For the ones who cannot accept there seems to be only one choice: to walk away.

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GOOD CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT EVIL

The child in Omelas exists to remind the citizens that for their lives to continue to be full of joy, the child must live a life of extreme suffering. “There may not even be a kind word spoken to the child” (LeGuin).

The child’s suffering is the only thing that allows the people of the Omelas to fully comprehend their own true happiness. It is the juxtaposition of the joy above and the suffering below that illustrates to the citizens of the Omelas the extent of the wonderment of their lives.“They know that they, like the child, are not free. They know compassion. It is the existence of the child, and their knowledge of its existence, that makes possible the nobility of their architecture, the poignancy of their music, the profundity of their science. It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children.” (LeGuin)

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INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY The citizens of Omelas take no responsibility for

the suffering of the child. The ones who stay live in a perfect society that tortures a child to stay that way, but the ones who leave also allow the torture of the child to continue.

The people who stay eventually convince themselves that any help given to the child would do no good. Even the citizens who walk away do not help the child.

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“THE LOTTERY”

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THE THEME OF:“THE LOTTERY” BY SHIRLEY JACKSON

There are many themes that can be derived from the story.

The dangers of blindly following tradition

Family ties

Hypocrisy

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THE DANGERS OF BLINDLY FOLLOWING TRADITION

The story tells readers about an annual tradition practiced by villagers of an anonymous small town, a tradition that continues even though it is barbaric and seemingly serves no purpose in the present setting.

Traditions will always have a place in society, even though the traditions may not always be acceptable in the present setting. These traditions are often so deeply rooted in a society that they can be very difficult to change.

In the “The Lottery” the tradition appears to be eternal; no one knows when it started, and no one can guess when it will end. The tradition is treated as though it is a force of nature, no one can seem to imagine rebelling against it because it has always been done that way.

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FAMILY

Family plays an interesting role in this story, in which each person in the community must draw a lottery piece per person in each household. This act seems to be the moment when belonging to a given family has the most socially recognized significance.

During the lottery, the bonds of mother to child, husband to wife, etc. become insignificant because of fear. The family members are willing to turn on each other due to their draw in the lottery. It seems that only after the results of the lottery takes place, that bonds of family and community return once again. At this point the community and family mourn the loss of its members.

The emphasis of family and community in this story heightens the sense of cruelty for the reader. As soon as Tessie draws her paper, her entire family and community turns on her.

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HYPOCRISY

Hypocrisy gives reason for the sudden shift in opinions and loyalties that can be tied back into the theme of family. Whole families seemed as willing to turn on each other as Tessie turned against hers.

The earnestness of the townspeople is particularly frightening, they are convinced that because they drew for it, they had just cause to murder a member of their community.

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“THE THING IN THE FOREST” BY A.S. BYATT

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THE THEMES IN “THE THING IN THE FOREST”

Loss of innocence

Abandonment

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LOSS OF INNOCENCE

The girls, Penny and Primrose, run from the young girl Alys into the unknown of the forest. They are trying to escape their own youth and be more mature, perhaps to combat their fear of what is happening to them.

Each girl lives their life trying to come to terms with what they witnessed in the forest that caused them to grow up too quickly.

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ABANDONMENT

Penny and Primrose are sent away from their families without being given any reason. They are afraid of everything even suffering “suffocating anxiety about what would happen if they wanted to pee in the middle of the night” (Byatt).

The reason the girls were so quick to form such a close friendship was because they did not want to be alone. They felt that the railroad stations did not have names because they “were not meant to know where they were going or, like Hansel and Gretel, to find the way back” (Byatt).

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WORKS CITED PAGEByatt, A.S. “The Thing in the Forest”. The Norton Introduction to Literature. NY: W.W. Norton, 2013: 302-317. Print.

Jackson, Shirley. “The Lottery”. The Middlebury Blog Network. 2005. Web. <http://sites.middlebury.edu/individualandthesociety/files/2010/09/jacksonottery.pdf>

LeGuin, Ursula. “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas”. Harel’s Corner. Web. <http://harelbarzilai.org/words/omelas.txt>

Mays, K. J. (2013). The Norton Introduction to Literature. NY: W.W. Norton, 2013. Print.