Literary Themes
Eng125
Inst: Alice Martin
Warren Nance
4/16/14

Literary Themes are composed of different parts, plot, point of view, tone, setting, character, symbolism, etc. Every individual can read a story or poem and get his or her own idea of what it means but each story has all these components.
A theme is not the plot of the story but, it’s the representation of the idea behind the story. This means to me that it’s a point that the writer is trying across to the reader. For example when a writer is taking about taking a road less traveled. The theme of this would be life.

A story often has symbolism. A symbol is something that has a literal identity but also stands for something else—something that is widely understood and has been developed over a long period of time or by common agreement. To me this means the write doesn’t come right out and say what he wants the reader to see. But, he uses other things in place of. For example when a writer speaks of cross roads, he doesn’t mean the literal cross roads with stop signs. He is meaning a decision someone must make. Here are a few for examples from our text book:
• Spring Birth, new beginning
• Summer, Maturity
• Autumn, Aging
• Winter Death, stagnation, sleep
• Light Hope, knowledge, truth, safety
• Darkness Fear, ignorance, evil, danger

A character is not the letting but, it’s the person that’s in the story. A reader can do many things with these characters. One can imagine what the look like, sound like, and act like. Usually the writer will tell enough about a character to give one a general idea about that character.

The Point of View refers to who tells the story—how the action is presented to the reader. They’re many types of point of view; first person point of view and third person point of view. First person point of view the writer is in the story. But the third person point of view the writer is a fly on the wall. Plot is a dynamic element in fiction, a sequence of interrelated,