THEMES

There are several themes in Cheat!:

 Competitiveness - positive spirit to compete with others
 Honesty - being honest in every aspect of life as honesty is the best policy
 Creativity - being creative is a positive value
 Building self-confidence - self-confidence can be built by trying new things
like entering writing competition
 Keeping anger and dissatisfaction in oneself - learn to put aside anger and
personal dissatisfaction
 Keeping faith with friends/other people - should have faith towards
friends/other people

Themes Creative writing is not always original Being Judgemental

4. 1.Being Judgemental

5. Explanation The short story is revolved around the theme of being judgemental. There are a few
characters can be related to this theme. They might jump into conclusion too soon and it caused
misunderstanding.

6. Examples Lynne is one of the characters who is judgemental. After she read about the book
written by William Bradburie in the library, she was filled with anger. She said that Geoff is cheating
in the short story competition even though she has never read Geoff’s story before. Another person
related to the theme is Marge. She is the classmate for Geoff and Marge. When Geoff mentioned
that he wanted to be a barrister or lawyer, Marge labelled him as money minded. It can be hurtful
when we labelled someone.

7. 2.Creative writing is not always original

8. Explanation A creative idea or innovation like is not always original because we will take idea and
inspiration from different resources to make improvement. The same goes with story writing, the
originality does not really exist because our story’s idea will come from the story that we read, our
experience and our surrounding.

9. Example Lynne emphasised the importance of originality in the writing. When she realised that
Geoff is not cheating, she was wondering whether she had read any story related to the sheepdog in
flood. As for Geoff story, although his story idea is similar to William Bradburie’s story, Mr Velos told
Lynne that the story is still consider original and Geoff is not cheating.