Themes - CCEA

The material on this page is designed to help you with revision and preparation for your CCEA GCSE English Language exams. It applies to Unit 4, Section B, Task 2: Reading literary texts.

• Unit 4 is assessed by a written exam, worth 30% of your final mark
• There are three tasks (numbered 2, 3 and 4) in Section B of the Unit 4 exam, worth 62 of the 150 marks available
• In task two, you will be given two extracts from literary texts (eg novels)
• You will be expected to compare and contrast these two extracts and explain how the writers have achieved something in particular (eg created a sense of excitement, or presented interesting characters)

You can practice for your English Language GCSE exams with a range of CCEA past papers and mark schemes.

• Themes are the big ideas in stories, such as love, power or heroism; it’s not just about what happens, but what the story means
• Motifs help reveal themes: they’re repeated images or ideas
• Themes often clash, such as love versus hate or an idea of paradise versus reality; these opposites make stories more interesting
• Writers use language to show themes, through word choices, setting descriptions and character behaviour
• You can discover themes even in short extracts by looking for clues in the words, imagery and mood the writer creates

Although a text may appear to be about events that take place, the themes are the important ideas and meanings that run throughout the text. For example, Lord of the Flies by William Golding is about a group of schoolboys stranded on an island. However, the writer is also presenting the reader with some important ideas – themes like the loss of innocence and the conflict between violence and reason.

Other common themes in fiction include:

• power
• love
• money
• death
• appearance and reality
• heroism
• technology in society
• friendship

One of the easiest ways to spot themes is through motifs. A motif is a repeated image or idea in a text that helps develop a theme. It helps to know that the word ‘motif’ comes from the French word for pattern. For example, in the novella Of Mice and Men, there is a focus on the images of hands throughout the text. The image of hands could develop various themes, including violence and identity.

Identifying a theme in an extract

In an extract you might only be able to say what themes are suggested. When working with a short extract of a fiction text, it helps to look closely at the language choices to work out the themes.

Example

Look at the opening of Skellig, by David Almond, where the narrator finds Skellig for the first time. Try to identify the themes that run through this extract.

I found him in the garage on a Sunday afternoon. It was the day after we moved into Falconer Road. The winter was ending. Mum had said we'd be moving just in time for the spring. Nobody else was there. Just me. The others were inside the house with Doctor Death, worrying about the new baby. He was lying there in the darkness behind the tea chests, in the dust and dirt. It was as if he'd been there forever. He was filthy and pale and dried out and I thought he was dead. I couldn't have been more wrong. I'd soon begin to see the truth about him, that there'd never been another creature like him in the world.

Skellig, David Almond

Analysis

There are plenty of hints that death is an important theme in the novel. For example:

• the name of the doctor is "Doctor Death"
• Skellig appears to be "dead"
• there is also the "worry" about the new baby

However, there are also hints at renewal and life after death:

• the family have moved ‘just in time for the spring’, a season of renewal
• Skellig seems to have been there ‘forever’

The images and word choices in this opening paragraph suggest that a major theme in this book is death.

Identifying the themes of a text is an act of inference. You can make links between the themes of a text to the characters, the setting and the language.

Don’t confuse the topic with the theme. For example the topic of a text could be two friends travelling around looking for work on ranches, but the themes might be friendship and the pointlessness of dreams as seen in Of Mice and Men.

When you focus on a theme within a text, expand your exploration beyond simply identifying main themes – like hate, family, relationships or power. Instead, look at how themes relate to each other by exploring conflicting ideas and the clash of opposites at the heart of them. For example:

• conflict – us versus them, friends versus foes, the state versus the citizen
• family – feelings of safety versus desire for independence
• love – desire for something forbidden versus attainable love
• power – the individual versus the state, man versus nature
• place – an idea of paradise versus reality, the idea of home versus exile
• nature – the separation of man from nature, natural beauty versus destruction

An interesting theme involves a clash of opposites. Love as a theme is more interesting when there is conflict. If two people meet, fall in love and there are no problems, then it is not a very interesting story. Without something trying to stop love, the story has nowhere to go.

You can give structure and energy to an analysis essay by discussing the opposite sides of a theme.

The following extract is taken from a short story called Your Shoes, by Michelle Roberts:

Your father didn’t mean it when he told you those things the other night. You’ve got to understand, he lost his temper and used some unfortunate expressions. At your age I’m sure I wouldn’t have known the meaning of any of those words. As a young girl I’d have been hit if I used such language as I’ve heard you use. I was very old-fashioned. Square, they called it then. I grew up in a very old fashioned family. Of course we had a marvellous time together, but my father was very strict. It didn’t do me any harm.

Your Shoes, Michelle Roberts

This extract suggests some interesting, contrasting themes. For example:

• family
• parent/child relationships
• mother/daughter relationships
• conflict
• differences between the generations

Writing about themes could give your analysis of an extract a deeper response and show that you are thinking about the ideas the writer is presenting.

When you are analysing an extract, think about the following:

• How does the language choice suggest a theme?
• Are there any patterns in the language that give emphasis to a theme?
• Do particular images suggest a theme?
• How does the description of the setting suggest the theme?
• Which events help to develop the themes in the extract?
• How do the characters in the extract represent the theme?
• Are there any language choices that suggest a clash, opposites or conflict of themes?

Example

The opening of Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, describes a setting with very little action. The reader can detect some of the themes and ideas of the text from Huxley’s language choices.

A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.

The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic gooseflesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables.

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

Analysis

The author’s use of language in this extract presents the reader with some important themes:

• The workers have "corpse-coloured" rubber gloves; this disturbing use of alliteration gives these figures a gruesome death-like appearance.
• The word "hatchery" usually has connotations of life beginning, but within the context of this extract the word seems sinister.
• The summer is "beyond the panes", which creates a sense of the warm symbol of nature existing outside this place, inside is only "wintriness."
• The metaphor "the light was frozen, dead, a ghost" emphasises the lifelessness of the place. This effect is reinforced by the use of three blunt words to create the image; light is usually connected to life but here these words “…frozen, dead, a ghost…” link light to death.
• The light is personified as "hungrily seeking", as if the natural light is in conflict with this man-made place.
• The adjectives used through the extract: “…grey…cold…harsh…thin…pallid…pale…yellow…” create a negative, lifeless mood.
• The only colour is connected to the man-made object of the microscope, through the use of the simile “…lying along the polished tubes like butter.” Even here the life is "borrowed" from the microscope; the verb "lying" suggesting something lacking in energy and life.

These language choices combine to suggest two themes:

• life and death
• man versus nature

Even from this short extract it’s clear that the scientific setting is important. Those who work in the centre are almost lifeless.

The way the light seems to be fighting against the sterile laboratory suggests there is a tension between man and nature.

Colour and light are important images in this extract. They can be used to support the theme of life and death. Light is usually a sign of life, but here it is negative.