Theme

A broad idea, message, or lesson that is conveyed by a work. The message may be about life, society, or human nature. Themes often explore timeless and universal ideas and may be implied rather than stated explicitly. Along with plot, character, setting, and style, theme is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction. 
==Techniques==
Various techniques may be used to express themes.
===Leitwortstil===
Leitwortstil is the purposeful repetition of words in a literary piece that usually expresses a motif or theme important to the story. This device dates back to the One Thousand and One Nights, also known as the Arabian Nights, which connects several tales together in a story cycle. The storytellers of the tales relied on this technique "to shape the constituent members of their story cycles into a coherent whole."
===Thematic patterning===
Thematic patterning is "the distribution of recurrent thematic concepts and moralistic motifs among the various incidents and frames of a story. Thematic patterning may be arranged so as to emphasize the unifying argument or salient idea which disparate events and disparate frames have in common". This technique also dates back to the One Thousand and One Nights.
==See also==
* Moral
* Motif (narrative)
==External links==
* Wiktionary definition
Category:Literary concepts
Category:Narrative units
Category:Fiction
here is a section about the theme of a specific short story from an old book
In The Outcasts of Poker Flat, the theme is suggested several times. It is said of Mr. Oakhurst that he was "too much of a gambler not to accept Fate. With him life was at best an uncertain game. " Again, he points out "the folly of 'throwing up their hand before the game was played out. " He tells The Innocent that "Luck is a mighty queer thing. . . . And it's finding out when it's going to change that makes you. If you can hold your cards right . along, you're all right. " Later, he "settles himself coolly to the losing game before him. " Finally, in the inscription, he speaks of himself as having "struck a streak of bad luck. " These variations keep the theme ever before one's mind, without causing any strain in attention. In the same story, there is a refrain suggestive both of purpose and of climax. 
In Mrs. Knollgs, the variations of the theme are less easily distinguishable. Mrs. Knollys is introduced as hopeful-eyed, and Charles Knollys is said to have had "great hopes. " Hope is shown again where the two, instead of looking at the mountain round them, are planning the furnishings for the cottage on Box Hill. The German scientist had a hope of refuting Spliithner's theory. Then Mrs. Knollys in her distress exclaims, "They said that they hoped he could be recovered, " and out on his evening stroll the scientist echoes the remark. She lived with his memory. "Was he not coming back to
her?" "She knew the depths of human hope and sorrow. " Mary Knollys had looked five and forty years ahead. On her last night of waiting, she had slept, "the glacier ever present in her dreams. " Twice it is said of the glacier that "immortality lay brooding in its hollows. " Here are many different kinds of hope, to be sure, but they all echo the same spirit of quiet waiting, of a mind bent upon the future.
Category:story components