-Theme –

The Moral Point of

View

PowerPoint presentation ©2010 by Diane Orsini

 The purpose of this PowerPoint presentation is to
supplement and clarify the excellent material
presented in the textbook Writing Fiction, which you
should read first. It contains:
• A working definition of Theme: what it is and what it isn’t.
• An explanation of the components of Theme.
• An analysis of three famous statues of David in order to
show how Theme emerges through the subtle choices an
artist makes.
• Some suggestions to help you along as you construct your
story.
 At the heart of any work of art,
published or not, world famous or not,
is an insight into human experience
that the artist believes passionately.

This is theme.
 This is not an invitation to
stand on a soap box and preach.
Stiff-necked preaching is boring.
Blah! Blah!
Hear my
Truth with a
capital T!
As movie
mogul Samuel
Goldwyn
observed, “If
you have a
message, send a
telegram.”
 Instead, it is
a matter of the
author’s ability
to clarify for
him or herself
what is essential
in a story—its
vein of gold.
…and I was so lonely and
bored and I just sat down
and scribbled this and I
want you to read it, edit it,
publish it, and pay me…

Artists do
not “express
themselves”
when they make
others read what
belongs in a
diary!
 Rather, artists
express their world
view through the
deliberate creation of
a fictional event that
acquires meaning as
someone else
experiences that
event through
reading or viewing.
What that experience adds up to
for each individual reader is
theme.
Theme is the soul
of your piece—
your truth, with a
lower-case ‘t.’
It’s easy to throw away a story
that you don’t believe in.
It’s a lot riskier to put at the center
of a story a human insight you’ve
acquired in your life—riskier,
because you must really put a
belief ‘out there’ for others to see
and possibly judge.
 The payoff,
however, is a
thoroughly
original work of
art through which
an artist finally
achieves the goal
of self-expression.
Let’s start with this:‘Idea’ corresponds to
the word ‘topic’ when you write an
essay: it is what the story is about.
 Let’s pretend you’re Edgar Allan Poe and,
mulling over an event you witnessed the night
before at the tavern, you get an idea:

“I know! I’ll create a

story about a
testosterone-driven
contest between two
equally-horrid men; the
prize is higher social
status and respect from
the other!”
You work and you work and you
work.
Gradually, after a couple of weeks, the
story stops being about the contest itself
and more about the loser’s inner conflict.
You become aware that the great subject
of this piece is one man’s desire for
revenge. You want to share all your deep
thoughts with us about what makes
people want revenge!
But preaching at us is just going to make us
mad at you. So—you must find a way to
lock what you want to say about revenge
into a compelling and believable action.
“Aha!” you write in your notebook. “At the
critical moment—just when it could go
either way and the two might end up as
friends—Fortunato, consistently
underestimating a deadly opponent,
humiliates Montresor one last time by
performing a certain gesture that signifies to
Montresor that he isn’t cool enough to get
into Fortunato’s A-list fraternity!”
It becomes clear to
you that there is
only one believable
way to end the
story:
Fortunato must die at the
hands of Montresor in
the catacombs. There
will be no reprieve. And
to show how ridiculous
this is, you’ll be vague
about what set Montresor
off in the first place.
 As you rewrite,
you notice
something about
Montresor: for a
man who gets
what he wants, he
doesn’t seem to
be very happy.
 It is through this perception that the
story’s Theme, its insight into human
experience, begins to emerge:
Revenge destroys both victor
and victim; it never gives
revengers what they think
they want from an enemy.
 In order to better understand
‘theme’ and how, through the
experience of art, it expresses a
unique world view, let us consider
three great visual artists and the
unique ways they approached the
same subject.
Go back in time to your Sunday school days. Do
you remember the story of David, the young
Jewish shepherd, and Goliath, the gigantic
Philistine warlord?
If the details are a little fuzzy, then
break out the Old Testament and
read Chapter 17 in the First Book
of Kings (I Kings 17). It’s a
compelling story you’ll find well
worth your time.
 “And the Philistine came on, and drew nigh against David,
and his armorbearer before him. And when the Philistine looked,
and beheld David, he despised him. For he was a young man,
ruddy, and of a comely countenance. And the Philistine said to
David, ‘Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with a staff?’ And the
Philistine cursed David by his gods [. . .]
“And when the Philistine arose and was coming, and drew
nigh to meet David, David made haste, and ran to meet the
Philistine. And he put his hand into his scrip, and took a stone, and
cast it with the sling, and fetching it about struck the Philistine in
the forehead: and the stone was fixed in his forehead, and he fell on
his face upon the earth. And David prevailed over the Philistine,
with a sling and a stone, and he struck, and slew the Philistine.”
Imagine now that an up-and-coming
artist has been commissioned by a
wealthy Florentine businessman to
create a statue commemorating this
Biblical event for the sake of civic
pride—and to flash his new money
at the local aristocracy.
 The subject has already been
interpreted by dozens of artists!
What freshness can this artist
possibly bring to it? But of course,
an impoverished sculptor in search
of a wealthy patron doesn’t enjoy
the privilege of saying no. . .
 Especially if the
year is 1444 and his
name is Donatello
(Donato di Niccolò
di Betto Bardi), one
of the greatest of all
Italian Renaissance
artists.
He has no choice about his subject. All
he has is his imagination. Gradually,
an idea forms: this statue isn’t just to
please a nouveau-riche merchant; it
will communicate to a mostly-illiterate
people something Donatello believes
about the power of God.
 Sculpture isn’t kinetic! So: what
necessarily-static moment does he
choose as the vehicle to
communicate his truth? What
action crystallizes what’s
important in the story to him?
 Eureka!
He chooses the moment
immediately after David slays the
giant. It could be a dramatic
tableau: the nude young
champion with his bare foot on
Goliath’s armored head.
And there’s something else: This
is a story about God, who has
come through on a promise to a
people and to a young man.
 How can Donatello magnify that
point? How can he as the artist
intensify for the viewer the miracle
of what God accomplished through
the young shepherd?
Let us now examine what
Donatello chose to create.
 Admit it. You’re a little
disappointed, especially after
that big build-up. Good.
Look at how young--and
frankly epicene--this image of
David appears to be. The
helmet looks like a flower-
bedecked Easter hat!
What, you say to
yourself, was Donatello
thinking when he created this
little girly-man?
 What, indeed?
Please take a moment and consider
what Donatello wanted to express
through the statue. Then, when you’re
ready, click to the next slide.
The smaller and weaker David appears
to be physically, the greater is the
miracle of God’s power through him in
the defeat of the giant Philistine. Far
from demeaning David, Donatello
shows how deliberately God chose--
and protected--His servant.
 A hundred years later, around
1501, another up-and-coming artist
is contacted by another powerful
patron who wants a massive
sculpture to ornament Florence’s
Piazza della Signoria.
 That artist is
Michelangelo
Buonrarroti; the
patron is Lorenzo
di Medici, who
commissions a
statue of the young
Jewish shepherd,
David.
 Look
carefully at
this famous
image. See
what
Michelangelo
chose to
express
through stone.
 Notice the stance
I can take
David assumes. His weight
him! rests on his right leg; his left
is poised, ready to take that
weight when he swings his
body into the death-dealing
stroke.
The slingshot rests on
his shoulder, and he is about
to draw it into position. His
face reveals intensity,
determination, and the
absence of fear.
 This is David in his youth: song-writer,
shepherd, savior of his people, and
beloved of God. He will grow up to covet
and seduce Bathsheba, wife of a loyal
friend. He will arrange the death of that
loyal friend in order to marry Bathsheba.
Their first child will die in infancy and
another will grow up to scheme against
his father and die a traitor’s death.
Michelangelo chooses to render
none of this.
 Instead, he chooses the exact
moment before it all happens--
when David steps from youth to
manhood. While the statue is a
celebration of male beauty and
power, it is much more than that.
Goliath is the unknowable future,
and David is suspended between
what was and what will be—as we
are when we confront our own
challenges.
 Less spiritual and ethereal than
Donatello’s image of David,
Michelangelo’s is masculine,
secular, archetypal, and dazzling.
 Let’s leap forward a hundred
years more to 1623, when a pope
commissions another up-and-
coming artist to create yet another
statue of our favorite Old
Testament hero.
 This artist is Gian
Lorenzo Bernini, the
greatest sculptor of
the Italian Baroque
period, and he is
eager to prove
himself worthy of
his inherited
tradition.
Bernini is twenty-one years old,
and this statue, his first major
piece, will be the making of his
entire career—or the end of it.
This is his interpretation.
Notice that Bernini’s
David takes that single
step farther than
Michelangelo’s—as
Baroque artists had
developed the
technology the
Mannerists didn’t have
to handle marble so that
it reflected motion in a
less static and more
human way.
 But the attempted (and
unsuccessful) patricide is only part
of what makes this statue worth
studying.
Please look carefully at the faces.
 Notice the similarities? Look at the
eyebrows and the noses—even the tight
set of the mouths.
Of course it’s a self-portrait. And
yet, as purely ego-driven as that
seems on the surface, the statue
means much more than that.
 In his interpretation of David,
Bernini, by using his own face as
the model for the face of the the
young shepherd in the moment he
meets the challenge of an
impossible task, suggests
something you should keep in
mind when doubt threatens you.
 Bernini/David personifies all
developing artists who tremble on
the brink as they master their
craft. They are guided and
protected in their audacious quests
by their creative inner lights--as
David was guided and protected
by God.
Bernini succeeded—and so will
you.
Remember Pieter Brueghel’s
“Landscape with the Fall of
Icarus?”
Consider how W. H. Auden
interprets the theme of this
painting in his poem
“Musée des Beaux Arts” *

*“Museum of Fine Arts”

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there must always be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot,
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. --1940
So— are you depressed yet? Look now to
Anne Sexton’s interpretation of Icarus’s
plight in her sonnet,
“To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to
Triumph.”
Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wings on,
testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade,
and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn
of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made!
There below are the trees, as awkward as camels;
and here are the shocked starlings pumping past
and think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well;
larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast
of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings!
Feel the fire at his neck and see how casually
he glances up and is caught, wondrously tunneling
into that hot eye. Who cares that he fell back to the sea?
See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down
while his sensible daddy goes straight into town.
--1962
Feel better now?
 Here are some suggestions to
help you on your journey to
discovering theme in your work.
• Recognize that there is a difference between the dominant point of
view in a story (the business of Plot and Character) and the story’s
own point of view, which is the business of theme.
• Take two work days off from your story. Don’t even think about it.
• Go see a movie with a friend. Have coffee after and compare notes on
what you each felt the director and screenwriter communicated
through the action.
• Re-read your story someplace other than your work zone. When you
look at your draft, what seems shrill or false to you? Perhaps that
section might be cut in favor of a new aspect.
• What insight into the human experience do you see already beginning
to emerge? Ask yourself how you might direct the action to clarify and
explore that insight.
Show’s over. Now get back to
work.You know what you must
do next.