From: elf@halcyon.com (Elf Sternberg)
Subject: Theme ~ Moral
Originator: elf@halcyon.com
Reply-To: elf@halcyon.com (Elf Sternberg)
Organization: Pendor, UnLtd.
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 06:59:00 GMT

In article <92314.140929KVJLC@ASUACAD.BITNET>
     KVJLC@ASUACAD.BITNET (Jon L. Campbell) writes:

>A story with a theme is one that
>tries to leave an underlining message ~ subliminal message for the reader
>to grasp and apply (e.g. love conquers all, etc.).  Morality in fiction is
>not really any different.  Take the morality of 'love conquers all' and
>apply it a story.  What you end up with is a theme with which the story
>is based.

   I would argue against the concept "love conquers all" as necessarily
a 'moral,' but it's certainly a theme.  There is not one story, not one
work of fiction much admired these days, that does not have a powerful
underlying theme to it.

   "Moby Dick" has the theme "Obsession is a powerful destroyer of
men."  "Star Wars" was simplistic, "Good shall conquer over evil."
Every cheap romance novel has the theme "Love shall win in the end."
Even songs like "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" have themes, such
as "Beware nature's fury."  Both Star Trek series had a major theme for
every episode, usually simplistic, and the series itself had an
encompassing theme, illustrated explicitly on page 4 of the Star Trek:
The Next Generation Scriptwriter's Guide:

      "The new Star Trek will continue the tradition of vivid
   imagination, intelligence, and sense of fun, while still
   exploring the themes of what we humans presently are, where we
   are going, and what our existence is really about."

>Morality is an artistic work that teaches a moral lesson according
>to Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary.  If this is true then what is
>the difference between theme and morality, nothing.  Plain and simple when
>someone attempts to subvert a story with their own ideas of morality, then
>they are playing god with the mind of the reader.  Because morality in the
>story is so subtle, it is subliminal and therefore, dangerous.  A means of
>invoking thoughts and prejudices, love and hate, right and wrong, but who
>among any writer has that responsibility.

   Ah, but the writer has every right to impose those thoughts upom his
audience.  It's the _audience_ that has the responsibility of deciding
what it does with the writer's imposed beliefs.

   People reading my stuff because it's science fiction run the risk of
liking my characters, only to find out later that he or she might be
gay.  More than once people have told me that my stories have made them
re-assess their feelings towards gays-- as a writer, _I'm doing my
job_.  I'm reaching people.  People who don't want that message can put
down my stories and never read them again.

   People reading my stories run the risk of running into my
philosophies; seeing as they're the ones I'm most comfortable with,
they're the ones my characters will be most familiar with, and the
easiest for me to illustrate by example and exposition.

   I'm not going to shirk my feelings for the sake of a "good" story.
"With great power comes great responsibility," "The highest human value
is personal responsibility," "Everything in human experience is
negotiable," "Free will is good," "Technology is inherently the tool of
people, neither good nor evil in its own right," and so forth... these
are _my_ beliefs, and no 'protagonist' of mine is going to argue
against them.  Not only would I not respect myself in the morning, but
I doubt I could convincingly write such a story.

>   A story is just that.  Nothing more than one persons idea of reality or
>un-reality (i.e. lack of reality).  High school english or college writing,
>it doesn't matter, but wherever theme is taught it is an abuse of mankinds
>free choice.  The freedom to choose what is moral or not, the freedom to
>decide for themselves what is morality and what is immoral.  To write a
>moralistic theme into a story is equlivent to artistic incest.  Think
>about it.

   Ah, but every story, from the Myths of Methuselah through Homer,
Petronius, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Bronte, Byron, Wilde,
Hemingway, through to Stephen King, Danielle Steele, Gabriel
Garcia-Marquez and Daniel Least Heat-Moon... their stories have themes!

   And I _have_ to ask, where is the freedom of choice best exercised?
By my self-censoring my ideas because others might find them
"subversive?"  Or by putting them out on the public market and letting
other people exercise their freedom of choice to read or not read, to
accept or reject, the ideas put before them?

In article <1992Nov5.213942.21335@galileo.physics.arizona.edu>
     lnh@soliton.physics.arizona.edu (sometimes a Wombat) writes:

|In general, forget everything you were taught in high
|school English class -- remember "is it man verses man or man verses
|nature"?

   I disagree with this, as well as Larry's insistence that "A story
theme that can be summed into one sentence will never be a novel."  I
still write stories... short, medium, novel, and even multi-book, that
can easily be summed up into one sentence.

   Take a look at any episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (a
local favorite, I think, because the writing is as beautifully
functional as it is transparent).  What does a writer do?  He looks at
the characters in the series and often asks himself a simple question:
"How can I introduce conflict into this character's life?  How will
he/she resolve it?  What are the repercussions of those actions?"

   Much of writing comes down to just that: A protagonist, a conflict,
and a resolution.  That resolution can be positive (Luke blows up the
Death Star) or negative (Hamlet dies).  But the _theme_ of a story is
illustrated by how a character reaches through the conflict to the
resolution.  _How_ that character applies _his_ beliefs (imposed by the
writer) on the conflict lead to the resolution.  Luke's willful
determination, bolstered by his belief in (THEME!) "Good conquers all,"
leads to the end of Star Wars, where his belief is held in triumph.
Hamlet's constant failure to resolve his conflict within himself
(THEME!) leads to the resolution of conflict by death and destruction.
Hamlet's internal themes do not stand up to the basic theme surrounding
the whole play, "Indecision sucks."

   Whether you like it or not, if your character has a fight with his
girlfriend and resolves that conflict, you have imparted to your reader
some belief about how boys and girls should get along.  If he fails to
resolve the fight, you tell your reader how why you think boys and
girls often fail to get along.  You have transmitted a meme, and
developed a theme.

               Elf !!!
-- 
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