1. Literature Unit 3 Theme, Summarizing, Inference

2. Theme A theme is a message about life that a writer wants you to understand. A story usually has one theme or sometimes more. It’s easy to confuse a story’s theme with it’s topic. A topic can be summed up in one word or two, such as “taking risks” A theme is a writer’s message about a topic. For example, “Life’s biggest rewards come from taking risks.

3. Summary and Inference To summarize a story is to briefly tell the story’s main points in your own words. In a summary, you don’t retell the entire story. You just tell the main points. An inference is a logical guess that is made based on facts and one’s own knowledge and experience. When you make an inference, you use information from the story to figure out something about the story such as the story’s theme.

4. Making inferences to identify the theme Often in a story, the author does not state the theme directly. You as the reader must make inferences based on what you learned in the story in order to identify the theme. There are four clues within a story that will help you find the theme. The first clue is the title of the story. The title may reflect a story’s topic and its theme. The second clue is the story’s plot. The events of a story often revolve around a conflict that is important to the theme.

5. The third clue is the characters in the story. What the characters do and learn can reflect the theme. The fourth clue is the setting of the story. A setting can suggest a theme because of what it means to the characters.