Review It
Establishing Theme Through Quotes and Symbols
One way a reader can improve his or her ability to use specific details to arrive at a theme is to isolate and closely examine specific quotations from a story and see how they help to reveal a bigger message the author may be trying to get us to decipher. In the previous exercise we pulled out quotes from the story and looked at how they helped us with our understanding of the story. We will use the same skills by looking at details, symbols, description and repetition, which will help us to determine themes of the story.
You will be working with three quotations from the story to paraphrase, analyze and evaluate the quote. In the short answer space for each quote, provide the following information:
Careful readers can identify the theme of a book by examining techniques an author uses.
- Paraphrase the quote— try to explain the quote in your own words.
- Analyze and evaluate the quote—explain the quote through its tone, diction and figurative language. Look at the specific details, any possible symbols, the descriptive words, and repetition to help you figure out what else you learn about Mabel from them. Try to show the importance of the quote in relation to the whole story, its possible themes, and what you think the author is trying to reveal through Mabel’s eyes.
