Themes and Claims 6/7/18

In today's class Mr. Rivers asked us a  true or false question. That question is "all themes are claims, but not all claims are themes". True or False? The majority of the class said true because claims are strictly based on facts and evidence when a theme can be specific and not forced on one thing. For example, Holden believes people are phony, this would be a claim because number one it is true and the second thing is that it is only focused on The Catcher in the Rye. If someone said teenager's anxiety makes them act phony, would be a theme but not as specific as someone can get. Themes  can be applied to all sources and it should be able to stand on its own two feet. With a theme you would want to add who? what? how? where? why? when? to make the theme more specific. After we discussed themes and claims we went to the classroom and looked at the themes we did yesterday in class. Yesterday we took claims that were on the board and turned them into themes by using who? what? etc. We then picked the one that we thought was good, and we discussed how Sean Lyons theme was more valuable because it did not focus on the Catcher in the Rye but focused on the real world. Mr. Rivers put something on classroom that was an assignment that was strictly on claims turning into a theme that is turning into a specific theme. We were then told that if we were working with a partner that we need to change 5 themes into specific themes and if you were working alone you only needed to do 3. As a result in giving us this assignment we had the period to work on it and if you did not finish in class then we needed to hand it in by this evening. He also told us to remember to read for our harkness that is on the 17th. As Mr. Rivers allowed us to work the rest of the class, as he walked around answering questions. I was able to finish my 3 themes, and I picked claims that were easy for me to relate to. For example, "The more Holden tries to act mature, the more immature he appears." which I was able to turn it into " Teenagers who try to act mature in situations end up acting more immature because they are trying to be someone they are not."  The other one that I chose was "Holden's insecurity comes from trying to cover up his pain after death. " I turned that into "People of any age that experienced a tragic event become insecure after trying to hide the pain that follows death because they fear how society will react.  And the last one I picked was this " Holden is starting to trust the reader and so he’s letting his guard down a bit. I ended up changing it to "Teenager's in high school that begin to trust others allow themselves to put their guard down because they feel as though they're in a safe environment"With all of my themes I was able to turn it into a specific theme by using who? what? etc. 

This can help everyone in the long run because by doing this activity it made us really understand how to change a claim into a theme into a specific themes. I think that this was a good experience and personally it really helped me understand how easy it really is to make a claim into a theme. It could help in any situation whether you are in high school or in college you need to know how to do this and the difference between them both.