I agree with the above, and would add, that a thematic
topic can be turned into a thematic statement
by following a fairly simple step-by-step
process.
Typically,
when writing an essay about a theme of a story, you begin with a
basic thematic topic. Think of this as a subject of the short
story. If you were to use the example above (societal traditions), the procedure of
turning a thematic topic into a thematic statement is as
follows:
- Ask: What are the
causes of societal traditions or what
are the effects of societal traditions in the
story? - Brainstorm a list of answers to the questions
above. - Use the list of plot details to then answer:
Through events in the story, what is the author trying to say about societal
traditions? - You will find that you might have
to make this question more specific as you look at your brainstormed list. In this
case, the author is clearly talking about a negative (or evil) societal tradition, so
you could re-write the question to say "What is the author trying to say about
evil societal traditions?" - Do not
use any of your examples in the one sentence answer to #4, but instead, write a
general answer that will be backed up (or proven) by examples.
Notice how the example from above does exactly this (and could be proven with examples
from the text which you would have already generated in step #2):
Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery"
depicts the evil [side of] overused traditions of any
society.
At this point, I
always encourage students to think about revising the original statement to make it even
stronger. I might tweak the above thematic statement to make it more
argumentative:
Shirley Jackson's short story, "The Lottery,"
shows that unquestioned tradition combined with ignorance results in people turning a
blind eye to habits which are inherently
evil.
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