A theme in literature is the central idea a work explores about people or about life, and it is best stated as a full sentence. “Love” is a topic. “Love can be proved by a sacrifice no one asks for” is a theme, the one Dickens builds A Tale of Two Cities toward. Stories rarely announce their themes. The reader assembles one from what the characters want, what they choose and what the ending does to them.
This page is the index. After a short section on how a theme differs from a topic, a moral and a motif come 50 subjects literature keeps returning to, grouped so you can find one fast, each with a sample theme statement and the classic it comes from. To work out a theme statement from the evidence in one particular story, step by step, see theme examples.
Theme, topic, moral and motif
Four words get mixed up in every literature class. They describe different things, and the difference matters as soon as you have to write about a theme or put one in a story.
| Term | What it is | Example |
|---|---|---|
| TermTopic | What it isThe subject, in a word or two | ExampleAmbition, in Macbeth |
| TermTheme | What it isWhat the work says about the subject, as a sentence | ExampleAmbition that overrides conscience destroys the peace it was meant to win. |
| TermMoral | What it isA lesson stated outright, usually as advice | Example“Slow and steady wins the race,” the usual moral of Aesop's tortoise and hare |
| TermMotif | What it isA concrete image or phrase that recurs and points toward the theme | ExampleBlood and sleep, which keep returning in Macbeth |
The moral is the one that trips people up. A moral tells you what to do. A theme tells you what the story found to be true, and it usually keeps some tension in it. Macbeth never says “don't murder your way to the crown.” It shows ambition winning everything it wanted and losing the ability to enjoy any of it. The image side is covered in the glossary entry on motif: a motif is something you can point to on the page, a theme is something you have to put into words.
Teachers sometimes call the one-word version a thematic concept and the sentence a thematic statement. A long work usually has one central theme and several smaller ones. Macbeth is also about fate, guilt and what it means to be a man, the taunt Lady Macbeth uses to push her husband to the murder. When you write an essay about theme, the statement is the claim you defend.
50 common themes in literature
These are themes that come up again and again, in classrooms and in fiction itself, grouped by what they are about. Each comes with a theme statement, which is one reading of what a particular work says, not the only one. Writers keep arguing with each other about the same few subjects, so one theme can be stated a dozen ways. To use the list, find the subject your story or essay is about, then turn it into a claim about your book with the questions under “How to find the theme of a story” below.
| Group | Themes in it |
|---|---|
| GroupLove and family (8) | Themes in itLove and sacrifice, forbidden love, second chances, love and duty, marriage and money, jealousy, parents and children, family ties |
| GroupIdentity and growing up (8) | Themes in itComing of age, loss of innocence, the divided self, appearance and reality, self-discovery, innocence and experience, the artist's calling, conscience and the law |
| GroupPower, society and justice (11) | Themes in itAmbition, the limits of power, social class, social convention, justice and mercy, revenge, freedom, the individual and the majority, gender roles, colonialism, greed |
| GroupGood, evil and conscience (9) | Themes in itGuilt, good and evil, forgiveness, faith and doubt, hypocrisy, betrayal, temptation, fate and free will, pride |
| GroupLife, death and time (6) | Themes in itMortality, the passage of time, memory, hope, the American Dream, isolation |
| GroupPeople and the world (8) | Themes in itHumans and nature, obsession, science and responsibility, survival, friendship and loyalty, courage, war, home and return |
Themes of love and family
Love stories are rarely about love alone. They test it against something else: a family, a duty, money, pride.
| Theme | Theme statement | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ThemeLove and sacrifice | Theme statementLove can be proved by a sacrifice no one asks for. | ExampleA Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens (1859). Sydney Carton takes Charles Darnay's place at the guillotine for the sake of Lucie, the woman Darnay married. |
| ThemeForbidden love | Theme statementLove that defies a feud exposes what the feud costs, even when the lovers lose. | ExampleRomeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare (c. 1595). The Montagues and Capulets make peace only over their children's bodies. |
| ThemeSecond chances | Theme statementLove given up for prudence can survive if both people grow. | ExamplePersuasion, Jane Austen (1817). Anne Elliot meets Captain Wentworth again eight years after she broke off their engagement. |
| ThemeLove and duty | Theme statementDuty to a cause can require giving up the person you love. | ExampleThe Aeneid, Virgil (c. 19 BC). Aeneas leaves Dido in Carthage because the gods send him on to Italy. |
| ThemeMarriage and money | Theme statementA marriage should rest on respect, not on the income that makes it convenient. | ExamplePride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (1813). Elizabeth turns down Mr. Collins, and at first Mr. Darcy, while her friend Charlotte marries Collins for a home. |
| ThemeJealousy | Theme statementJealousy feeds on suggestion and destroys what it fears to lose. | ExampleOthello, William Shakespeare (c. 1603). Iago's hints and a lost handkerchief are enough to make Othello kill Desdemona. |
| ThemeParents and children | Theme statementLove that has to be proved in words is easily faked, and real love often goes unspoken. | ExampleKing Lear, William Shakespeare (c. 1606). Lear rewards the daughters who flatter him and banishes Cordelia, who won't. |
| ThemeFamily ties | Theme statementA family holds together through poverty and loss when each member is allowed to become herself. | ExampleLittle Women, Louisa May Alcott (1868–69). The four March sisters grow in different directions and stay close. |
Themes of identity and growing up
Coming-of-age stories, the bildungsroman above all, put identity at the center: who a person believes they are, and what the world teaches them instead.
| Theme | Theme statement | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ThemeComing of age | Theme statementGrowing up means learning that what you wanted was not what you needed. | ExampleGreat Expectations, Charles Dickens (1861). Pip's fortune turns out to come from a convict, and the snobbery it bred has cost him years with Joe. |
| ThemeLoss of innocence | Theme statementThe first disappointed desire is also the first clear look at your own illusions. | Example“Araby”, James Joyce, in Dubliners (1914). A boy reaches the bazaar too late to buy the gift he promised and sees himself as “a creature driven and derided by vanity.” |
| ThemeThe divided self | Theme statementThe impulses a person disowns grow stronger when they are indulged in secret. | ExampleStrange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson (1886). Jekyll's potion releases Hyde, and in the end Hyde no longer needs it to appear. |
| ThemeAppearance and reality | Theme statementA beautiful surface can hide a corrupt soul, and hiding it lets the corruption grow. | ExampleThe Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde (1890). Dorian stays young while his portrait records every cruelty. |
| ThemeSelf-discovery | Theme statementWaking up to your own desires can make the life expected of you unbearable. | ExampleThe Awakening, Kate Chopin (1899). Edna Pontellier moves out of her husband's house and into a life of her own, at a price. |
| ThemeInnocence and experience | Theme statementInnocence and experience are two ways of seeing, and each misses what the other sees. | ExampleSongs of Innocence and of Experience, William Blake (1789–94). “The Lamb” and “The Tyger” ask the same question, who made you, and only the first one answers it. |
| ThemeThe artist's calling | Theme statementTo become an artist, a person may have to refuse home, church and country. | ExampleA Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce (1916). Stephen Dedalus decides he will not serve what he no longer believes in. |
| ThemeConscience and the law | Theme statementA person's conscience can be more moral than the laws and customs that raised him. | ExampleAdventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain (1884). Huck tears up the letter that would turn Jim in: “All right, then, I'll go to hell.” |
Themes of power, society and justice
Social novels and political plays turn the same questions over and over: who holds power, what it does to them, and what the people without it can do.
| Theme | Theme statement | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ThemeAmbition | Theme statementAmbition that overrides conscience destroys the peace it was meant to win. | ExampleMacbeth, William Shakespeare (c. 1606). Macbeth gets the crown and can no longer sleep. |
| ThemeThe limits of power | Theme statementPower that looks permanent is erased by time. | Example“Ozymandias”, Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818). A broken statue's boast, “Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”, faces nothing but sand. |
| ThemeSocial class | Theme statementClass divides people with the same needs, and understanding starts when they talk face to face. | ExampleNorth and South, Elizabeth Gaskell (1854–55). A mill owner and a striking mill hand learn to see each other as men. |
| ThemeSocial convention | Theme statementA society that values a woman only for the marriage she can make punishes her for every scruple. | ExampleThe House of Mirth, Edith Wharton (1905). Each compromise Lily Bart refuses moves her further down New York's social ladder. |
| ThemeJustice and mercy | Theme statementMercy can redeem a person the law would only crush. | ExampleLes Misérables, Victor Hugo (1862). A bishop gives the thief Jean Valjean his silver candlesticks, and Inspector Javert cannot live in a world where that works. |
| ThemeRevenge | Theme statementRevenge carried far enough turns the avenger into a cause of innocent suffering. | ExampleThe Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas (1844–46). Edmond Dantès ruins the men who betrayed him, until a child dies and he doubts his right. |
| ThemeFreedom | Theme statementKnowledge is a road to freedom, which is why the powerful try to withhold it. | ExampleNarrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass (1845). Hearing his master forbid his lessons, Douglass writes, “From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom.” |
| ThemeThe individual and the majority | Theme statementWhoever tells an inconvenient truth can be branded an enemy by the people he wants to protect. | ExampleAn Enemy of the People, Henrik Ibsen (1882). A doctor reports that the town's spa water is contaminated, and the town turns on him. |
| ThemeGender roles | Theme statementA marriage in which one partner is treated as a child ends the moment she sees it. | ExampleA Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen (1879). Nora walks out on her husband and her children. |
| ThemeColonialism | Theme statementA “civilizing” mission can hide a greed as savage as anything it claims to cure. | ExampleHeart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (1899). Marlow travels up the Congo River in search of the ivory agent Kurtz. |
| ThemeGreed | Theme statementGreed turns friends against each other and leads them to their own deaths. | Example“The Pardoner's Tale”, Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1390s). Three men set out to kill Death, find gold instead and murder each other for it. |
Themes of good, evil and conscience
Tragedies and moral novels test what people do when no one is watching, and what it costs them afterward.
| Theme | Theme statement | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ThemeGuilt | Theme statementA crime committed to prove you are above morality ends in a guilt that demands confession. | ExampleCrime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1866). Raskolnikov kills a pawnbroker to test his theory of extraordinary men. |
| ThemeGood and evil | Theme statementEvil can be beaten when ordinary people act together and trust what they know. | ExampleDracula, Bram Stoker (1897). The hunters pool their diaries, letters and notes to track the Count. |
| ThemeForgiveness | Theme statementForgiveness is the choice of someone who could take revenge, and it frees them too. | ExampleThe Tempest, William Shakespeare (c. 1611). With his enemies in his power, Prospero decides that “the rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance.” |
| ThemeFaith and doubt | Theme statementFaith is tested hardest by innocent suffering and is answered by love more than by argument. | ExampleThe Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880). Ivan's rebellion against a world where children suffer meets Alyosha's quiet faith. |
| ThemeHypocrisy | Theme statementPiety performed for an audience can hide a fraud, and the people it fools will protect him. | ExampleTartuffe, Molière (1664). Orgon promises his daughter and signs over his house to a pious impostor. |
| ThemeBetrayal | Theme statementA betrayal committed for a noble cause can set loose the chaos it meant to prevent. | ExampleJulius Caesar, William Shakespeare (1599). Brutus joins the plot to save the republic, and Rome falls into civil war. |
| ThemeTemptation | Theme statementSelling your soul for knowledge and power buys pleasures too small to repay the price. | ExampleDoctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe (c. 1592). Faustus trades his soul for 24 years of a devil's service. |
| ThemeFate and free will | Theme statementThe harder people try to escape their fate, the more surely they fulfill it. | ExampleOedipus Rex, Sophocles (c. 429 BC). Oedipus flees the prophecy and walks straight into it. |
| ThemePride | Theme statementReaching beyond human limits ends in a fall. | ExampleMetamorphoses, Ovid (8 AD). Icarus flies too close to the sun on the wings his father made. |
Themes of life, death and time
Some of the oldest themes are the ones no plot can solve: time passes, people die, and memory keeps only part of it.
| Theme | Theme statement | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ThemeMortality | Theme statementFacing death shows how much of a life was spent on appearances. | ExampleThe Death of Ivan Ilyich, Leo Tolstoy (1886). A judge dying slowly sees that his correct career was not the right life. |
| ThemeThe passage of time | Theme statementThe world changes faster than people notice, and anyone who sleeps through it loses their place. | Example“Rip Van Winkle”, Washington Irving (1819). Rip sleeps for twenty years and wakes up after the American Revolution. |
| ThemeMemory | Theme statementThe past comes back through chance sensations, not through effort. | ExampleSwann's Way, Marcel Proust (1913). A madeleine dipped in tea brings back the narrator's childhood in Combray. |
| ThemeHope | Theme statementHope survives the worst conditions and asks nothing in return. | Example“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers”, Emily Dickinson (first published 1891). The bird keeps singing through the storm and never asks “a crumb” of the speaker. |
| ThemeThe American Dream | Theme statementMoney can buy a mansion but not a past, and the dream of remaking yourself breaks on that difference. | ExampleThe Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925). Gatsby's fortune can't buy back the five years Daisy spent without him. |
| ThemeIsolation | Theme statementA person can withdraw so far that kindness no longer reaches him. | Example“Bartleby, the Scrivener”, Herman Melville (1853). A copyist answers every request with “I would prefer not to.” |
Themes of people and the world
Adventure stories and early science fiction set people against something larger than themselves: nature, the unknown, war, the distance home.
| Theme | Theme statement | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ThemeHumans and nature | Theme statementNature is indifferent to human will, and survival depends on humility. | Example“To Build a Fire”, Jack London (1908). A man ignores an old-timer's warning never to travel alone in such cold. |
| ThemeObsession | Theme statementAn obsession with conquering an enemy can destroy everyone bound to the obsessed. | ExampleMoby-Dick, Herman Melville (1851). Ahab's hunt for the white whale sinks the Pequod and all but one of its crew. |
| ThemeScience and responsibility | Theme statementKnowledge pursued without limits creates horrors its maker won't answer for. | ExampleThe Island of Doctor Moreau, H. G. Wells (1896). A scientist carves animals into the Beast Folk and rules them with pain. |
| ThemeSurvival | Theme statementIsolation strips a person down to what they can make, and making things builds order and faith. | ExampleRobinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe (1719). A castaway farms, builds and keeps a journal for 28 years on an island. |
| ThemeFriendship and loyalty | Theme statementFriends loyal to one another are stronger than any one of them alone. | ExampleThe Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas (1844). D'Artagnan joins Athos, Porthos and Aramis: “All for one, one for all.” |
| ThemeCourage | Theme statementCourage can be learned only by someone who has seen his own cowardice. | ExampleThe Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane (1895). Henry Fleming runs from his first battle and later carries the regiment's flag. |
| ThemeWar | Theme statementWar turns the plans of generals into chance, and peace is found in ordinary life. | ExampleWar and Peace, Leo Tolstoy (1869). Pierre Bezukhov finds his calm as a prisoner of the retreating French army. |
| ThemeHome and return | Theme statementHome has to be won back, and whoever returns has been changed by the journey. | ExampleThe Odyssey, Homer (c. 8th century BC). Odysseus takes ten years to reach Ithaca and comes home in disguise. |
How to find the theme of a story
A theme lives in the shape of the whole story, so the questions that find it are about the whole story too. Work through them in order and write down short answers.
- What does the main character want at the start, and do they get it?
- What has changed by the last page, in the character or in the world around them?
- What does the ending reward, and what does it punish?
- What do the characters argue about? The theme is often the question they disagree on.
- What keeps coming back: an image, a phrase, a kind of situation?
- What does the title point to?
- Which scene could not be cut without the story losing its meaning? That is usually the climax, and the theme is what it decides.
Want. Three drunken revelers swear to find and kill Death, who has just taken their friend.
What changes. An old man sends them to an oak tree, where they find gold instead. The two older men stab the youngest when he comes back from town, then drink the wine he has poisoned. They do find Death, three times over.
Rewarded and punished. Greed is punished within a day. Their oath of brotherhood lasts until the gold appears.
What the teller says. The Pardoner preaches on one text, Radix malorum est cupiditas, greed is the root of evil, and then tries to sell his false relics to the pilgrims.
Theme statement. Greed destroys the loyalty it pretends to share. The frame adds a second theme the tale itself never states: a man can preach against a sin while living by it.
From topic to theme statement
Every entry in the index starts as a topic, a word or two. It becomes a theme only when you say what the work claims about that topic and can point to the detail that supports the claim. Three from the list:
| Topic | Theme statement | The detail that supports it |
|---|---|---|
| TopicAmbition | Theme statementAmbition that overrides conscience destroys the peace it was meant to win. | The detail that supports itMacbeth, just after killing Duncan, hears a voice cry “Macbeth does murder sleep,” and he never sleeps easily again |
| TopicForbidden love | Theme statementLove that defies a feud exposes what the feud costs, even when the lovers lose. | The detail that supports itRomeo and Juliet: the Montagues and Capulets make peace only over their children's bodies |
| TopicFate and free will | Theme statementThe harder people try to escape their fate, the more surely they fulfill it. | The detail that supports itOedipus Rex: Oedipus leaves Corinth to escape the prophecy and kills his real father on the road |
A statement that holds up is a full sentence, leaves out the characters' names, makes a claim a reader could argue with and survives the ending. The theme examples page works through that method in full, with 40 statements and weak versions rewritten as strong ones.
How theme grows in your own draft
You don't have to start with a theme statement. A plot built to prove one risks reading like a sermon, and many writers find the theme in the draft instead, in what the story keeps returning to. The work of revision is to notice it and give it a spine.
- Write first, name it after. Whether you are a plotter or a pantser, a finished draft tells you more about its theme than any plan. Read it through and write down what it seems to be arguing.
- Turn it into a question. “Can someone who was betrayed refuse to betray?” gives the protagonist something to answer. The character's arc is the answer, which is why the theme and the character's development are hard to separate.
- Make the climax test it. The protagonist's hardest choice should land on the theme: the moment where acting on it costs something. If the climax is about something else, one of the two needs to change.
- Give the other side a real voice. An antagonist or a foil who believes the opposite, for good reasons, keeps the book from preaching.
- Let images carry it. A recurring object does more than a speech, which is the whole case for a motif.
Once a draft exists, you can attach the chapters and ask the Strokes Assistant which ideas and images keep coming back, and in which chapters. If that list differs from the theme you meant, the draft may know the theme better than the outline does.
Frequently asked questions
Can a story have more than one theme?
Yes. Most novels and plays have a central theme and several smaller ones. Macbeth is about ambition, but also about guilt, fate and manhood. Short stories and fables tend to focus on one. In an essay, pick the theme you can support best with evidence from the text and say why it matters most.
What is the difference between a theme and a moral?
A moral is a lesson stated outright, usually as advice, like the line at the end of a fable. A theme is an insight the story shows rather than tells, and it can be more complicated than a rule. A moral says what to do. A theme says what the story found to be true.
Is theme the same as the main idea?
They overlap. Main idea usually means the central point of a passage or a nonfiction text, often stated in a topic sentence. Theme is used for fiction, poetry and drama, and it is usually implied: a broader insight about life that the whole work builds toward, not a point made in one place.
