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Themes and Motifs

Themes and Motifs. To Kill a Mockingbird. What is a motif?. recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes A motif may be: a literary element used repeatedly in one text two contrasting elements in a work (good and evil)

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Themes and Motifs

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  1. Themes and Motifs To Kill a Mockingbird

  2. What is a motif? • recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes • A motif may be: • a literary element used repeatedly in one text • two contrasting elements in a work (good and evil) • a literary element used over time in various texts, providing a useful example of a cultural "constant"

  3. Why use a motif? • it allows us to see main points and themes that the author is trying to express, in order that we might be able to interpret the work more accurately

  4. Examples of motif • Journey • Money • Tests of skill or wisdom • Separations and reunions • Rebirth • Prejudice • Swords

  5. Okay… Then what is a theme?

  6. What is a theme? • A common thread or repeated idea that is incorporated throughout a literary work, usually involving some insight into human existence • Themes are often related to the author’s purpose in writing the literary work. • Theme differs from the subject or topic of a literary work in that it involves a statement or opinion about the topic

  7. Examples of theme • The need to take care of one’s own behavior now, for it affects one’s condition in the afterlife (Dante’s Inferno) • The struggle of young girls turning into women (Little Women) • Inhumanity of racism (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

  8. Questions to help locate a theme • Does the text examine some common life experience or problem? • Does the text offer any solutions or answers to common problems? • How do the other elements in the story work together? What ideas or observations about life do they reveal?

  9. How is theme presented? • Often, stories suggest a theme through the details of: • Characters • Plot • Setting • Point of view • Themes of most literature have to do with emotions and experiences that make us human—fear, courage, loss, love, etc.

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