Lesson versus Theme

 Last week I talked about theme in story, about my own astonishment at discovering, not just that my stories had an identifiable theme but that it was pretty much the same one every time.  That my stories had a theme I should have known, of course.  I majored in literature in college and nearly completed an MA in the field, too, so I knew how to identify theme in fiction.  Probably the reason I never applied all that study to my own work was that I hadn’t thought of anything I produced as “literature.” 

I was just telling a story.

But the moment one of those stories was out there in the world sending occasional messages home, I found myself living in the tension between what I believed I was doing and what was being received.  Especially in classrooms where teachers seemed to be focused on lessons, not themes.

So what is the difference? 

We all know what a lesson is.  It’s a statement that says, You must do this!   A must that is all too easy to ignore. Last week, I gave examples of a few “lessons” students delivered to me from On My Honor, channeling their teachers, I presume.  Never go swimming in rivers.  Obey your parents.  Always tell the truth!  

But such statements were not what I intended.  Not because they were bad advice but because advice is toothless.  Easy to give, easy to ignore.  It’s our lived experience that convinces. 

To demonstrate what I mean, here are a couple of examples of the ways my own childhood’s lived experience impacted me:  I honor learning because learning was honored in my home.  Learning has served me all my life, so I have never questioned what I began with.  I know of no other way to be in the world.  Lived experience, however, can work in reverse, too.  I’m a truthteller precisely because I was lied to as a child.  The lies were meant to “protect” me, but once I understood they were lies, I was furious.  And my fury sent me into adulthood utterly determined to tell the truth, especially to children!  In either case, I don’t have to remind myself of what I’m supposed to like or what matters to me to do.  Learning excites me still.  And I am a truthteller in my bones … even when something less than the truth might be the wiser choice.

A good story offers lived experience, and a story’s theme rises out of the experience character and reader go through, an experience they feel.  Allow me to continue to use On My Honor as an example:  For those who haven’t read it, it’s the story of two boys who go swimming in a river, something they are forbidden to do because the river is dirty and dangerous.  Tony, the more daring of the boys, the one who instigated the exploit, drowns.  Joel, my main character, feels so guilty to have been doing something he wasn’t supposed to do that he tries to run away.  Even when he goes back home, he doesn’t report Tony’s drowning until hours have passed.

Initially, I began the story with the two boys biking toward the forbidden river.  But then I stopped.  If one of them was going to drown—and that was the premise I’d begun with—how could I resolve my story problem?  Not by bringing the drowned boy back to life.  It wasn’t that kind of a story.  So I started over again with an earlier story moment, a scene in which Tony is pressuring Joel to bike with him to the state park where Tony wants to climb the bluffs.  (Stopping at the river on their way had become an unplanned diversion.)  Climbing the bluffs is also forbidden … and also dangerous, and Joel doesn’t want to do it.  But he sees a way out.  Instead of saying no to Tony, he asks his father’s permission to bike to the park, confident his dad will forbid the outing.

Joel’s father is a thoughtful man, the kind who considers both sides of every question.  Not understanding what’s at stake because he hasn’t been told, he hems and haws but ultimately gives permission for the outing.  And from that moment on, the larger arc of story tension, the one I can resolve, is in place.  The story begins with Joel’s fury toward his father, his sense of betrayal, and ends when the breach is healed. 

Here is that final scene:

“Do you believe in heaven?” [Joel] asked at last.  “Do you believe Tony’s gone there?”

His father bent toward him.  “If there is a heaven, I’m sure Tony’s gone there,” he replied.  “I can’t imagine a heaven that could be closed to charming, reckless boys.” 

If! Joel felt as if he were sinking through the bed.  “What do you mean … if there’s a heaven?”

“I don’t suppose anybody knows,” his father answered gently, “what happens after.”  He hesitated, and one hand came up, described a series of circles in the air, then settled into his lap again as though it had finished the statement for him.  “I believe there’s something about life that goes on.  It seems too good to end in a river.”

Joel let his father’s words sift through him slowly.  He had hoped for something firmer, more certain.  Yes, there is a heaven.  Certainly Tony is there now.  He would have to settle, though, for what he got.

And what he got was a gentle summer night, a hollow place inside his gut that felt as though it might never be filled, and this man, his dad, who sat beside his bed.

“Will you stay?” he asked, reaching a hand out tentatively to touch his father’s knee.  Will you sit with me until I fall asleep?”

“Of course,” his father said.

And there is my story’s resolution … and its theme, the theme rising out of the resolution.  Sometimes those who are caring for you may fail you.  In On My Honor, your father might not give you the firm answers you’re asking for.  But someone—in this story it’s this same father—will be there for you.  Solidly, predictably there.

Did I know what I was saying when I went back to reframe the beginning, when I wrote that final scene?  Had I defined my story’s theme in my own mind?  I’m certain I had not.  I did know two things, though.  I knew that I had to set up a problem that my story could resolve, and I knew what kind of resolution felt right to me, what kind of story moment would satisfy and heal my own heart.

It’s my own need for that resolution, for that certainty of nurture, which draws me, again and again, to the same theme:  alienation from a caregiver, reconciliation with that or another caregiver.  In tapping into that bone-deep longing I find the energy that propels my story, an energy I’ve dipped into, again and again, over a long career.  And it is in resolving that longing that my story’s meaning is revealed.

That revealed meaning forms my story’s theme.