Chapter Five Part 2
The other helpful thing to do is to look for key moments of failure and triumph for the character, and try to figure out why they failed or succeeded.
In Harry Potter, the darkest moment of the whole series is the end of book five (or movie five, either way), The Order of the Phoenix, where Harry realises that his visions were wrong, that Voldemort was deliberately luring him to the Ministry of Magic, and as a result of this, his godfather is killed. Given that one of Harry’s key motivations throughout the series is to protect the people he loves (theme alert!), this is a failure of epic proportions: his one remaining relative who loves him is now gone, and it’s almost entirely Harry’s fault.
Why did he fail so direly here? Because he thought that he alone was capable of keeping his loved ones safe. Because he didn’t trust the adults in his life to be competent and well informed. Because he allowed his own sense of importance (in being the only one privy to Voldemort’s thoughts) to outweigh the explicit instructions of his mentor (though, granted, Dumbledore had been a headmaster for long enough that he ought to have known better than to tell a teen to do something without a reason, and actually expect them to do it). Let’s pull some themes out of that:
To keep your loved ones safe, it is necessary to sometimes trust others.
You are not the only competent person in the universe.
It is important to trust those who have proven themselves trustworthy.
Just because you don’t know the reason behind something, doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do.
No one is so special that they can’t make mistakes.
So much for failures; now what about successes?
Harry’s ultimate success is at the end of the series, when he willingly sacrifices himself for the safety and protection of his loved ones, so that Voldemort can be finally made mortal and the world can be rid of his evil for good. Harry walks into Voldemort’s glen, expecting full well that he will die, only to discover that, first of all, death is not the end, and second of all, neither is this the end for him. He rises again, but because he had died, Voldemort is now mortal and able to be vanquished, and not a single person at Hogwarts is able to be killed by Voldemort or his followers—a great triumph indeed. So, some themes:
Self-sacrifice is the highest form of love.
Love protects those we love. (Or, love has protective power.)
Courage is rewarded. (Harry is courageous as he expects to die, and his noble actions are rewarded—he returns to life.)
To rid the world of evil, good people must be willing to make sacrifices.
Death is not the end, and we should not live our lives in fear of death (as Voldemort does).
Let’s wrap this up with a quick look at how we can develop themes from ‘bad characters’ and their failures. Voldemort is an easy example here, given he keeps metaphorically bashing his head up against the stumbling block of Harry time and time again during the series. He constantly underestimates what Harry is capable of, and at one point Dumbledore even points out his major weakness: he doesn’t understand love (possibly can’t understand it, given he was conceived under the effects of a love potion) and so refuses to take its power seriously. Let’s thematise:
Don’t underestimate your enemies/rivals.
Don’t underestimate the power of something just because you don’t understand it.
Love really does have power, and if you can’t understand that, you’re doomed to a miserable life.
Inspiring people to fear you will never make you as powerful as someone who can inspire others to love them. (See: Harry, Dumbledore.)
Attempting to rule through fear is always ultimately doomed/can never be ultimately successful.
So, there are several ways to find the theme of a story:
- look for ‘quotables’;
- look at the ending particularly to see if the theme is stated outright;
- look at the difference between the characters at the beginning and the end;
- look at the main characters’ (plural) major failures;
- look at the main characters’ successes;
- look for the lessons the ‘bad characters’ fail to learn.
Take any of these things, turn them into a full sentence that comments in some way on how we should live our lives, and ta da! You just identified a theme.
Now, if you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that any one of these methods will net you not just one, but a whole bunch of themes. So now let’s head onwards, and talk about sub-themes. (Alternatively, if you need some more convincing that themes are even important, head to chapter eight, or if you’re a writer and want to learn how all this applies to your own work, see chapter seven.)
Introduction
Ch1 The Point Of A Text
Ch2.1 Thesis Statements
Ch2.2 Thesis Statements
Ch3 Quotes Are Usually Themes
Ch4.1 Theme In Fables
Ch4.2 Theme In Fables
Ch5.1 Finding Themes
Ch5.2 Finding Themes
Ch6 Subthemes
Ch7.1 Theme + You
Ch7.2 Theme + You
Ch8 Why Stories? Recognising Patterns
Ch9 Why Stories? Memory Aids
Ch10: Why Stories? Social Cooperation
Ch11: Why Stories? Power Structures
Ch12: Why Stories? Empathy
Conclusion