6/6/2018 : Exploring Themes

In today's class, we started by catching up with the assignment we were working on yesterday. In small groups, we responded to questions that were on the board like,

Holden thinks Sally Hayes is a phony but still goes out with her. Why?

Some responses from the groups included because she is attractive and also that Holden might be competing with his peers in some way.

Then we returned to the whole class and we discussed the difference between topic and theme. We learned that a topic is like a square and theme is more like a cube. I think that means a topic is kind

of flat but a theme has more depth.

Mr. Rivers then gave an idea of the differences between topic and theme by giving us examples:

1. Holden’s anxiety forces him to act phony. (Just in the text, generic, yes or no)

2. Teenagers’ anxiety forces them to act phony. (Move away from the text to be self sufficient)

3. A society which does not empathize with mental illness increases anxiety in teenagers, which force them to lie as  away to hide their shame. (Arguable, more thoughtful, sophisticated)

The first one is more like just a topic, the second one is better (more like a theme), the third one is the best because it has more depth.

We returned to our groups and were told to choose a sentence and elaborate further to establish a theme. To help us elaborate, we had to answer the questions who, what, when, where, and why so that our theme can be sophisticated and arguable. One example that our class came up that can be found on classroom is the sentence/theme:

"Teenagers in the 50's have anxiety that forces them to act phony because they want to be socially accepted by their peers to be considered normal."  More examples can be found on classroom.

I think studying themes is important because a good theme is universal and timeless. Teenagers had anxiety in the 50’s, teenagers have anxiety now, and teenagers probably had anxiety in ancient Greece. For example, in today’s world, someone like Holden Caulfield would probably be dealing with anxiety on instagram as he tries to maintain his finsta vs. his rinsta.