【正文】 present in the title. For example, Pride and Prejudice is about Darcy’s pride and Elizabeth Bennet’s prejudice. Main Street is about the life of middleclass people in a Midwestern town.. Think what the title of For Whom the Bell Tolls tells about its theme, and As I lay Dying.How the novelist shows his interest. If the novelist is interested in something, he would allow more space to it, describing or narrating in great detail. Yet, sometimes he emphasizes it by leaving it out, as in the case of Ernest Hemingway. The point concerned here is that why the novelist gives more attention to this particular character, since or event but not others.How the novelist deals with a mon subject. Often the novelist has to include in his work some mon subjects, but if he treats the mon subjects in an unmon way, it shows that he is trying to convey something new or important in the novel. Maybe it is the theme that demands him to do so.Important symbols. Symbols are loaded with important meanings. So if a symbol appears repeatedly or at important moments, it may point to the theme of the novel. A good example is the letter “A” in The Scarlet Letter.Important speeches. Characters talk and in their talk are revealed their judgments of the other characters or event. The characters’ judgments may give important clues to the theme.V. Obvious and unobvious themeObvious theme:The theme of a story, since we know, is whatever general idea or insight the entire story reveals. In some stories, the theme is rather obvious. For example, in Aesop’s fable about the council of the mice that cannot decide who will bell the cat, the theme is stated in the moral at the end: “It is easier to propose a thing than to carry it out.” In some novels, the title may offer a suggestion about the main theme. For example, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is named after its theme, and the whole story unfolds itself around that theme. In some novels, the title is not so named but the plot exists primarily to illustrate the theme and it is not very difficult for us to infer what it is. For example, Uncle Tom’s Cabin by and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck voice the themes of slavery and migratory labor respectively. The title of The Grapes of Wrath es from a line in an extremely famous Civil War song, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The line is, “He is trampling out the vintage where the Grapes of wrath are stored,” which means “an unjust or oppressive situation, action or policy that may inflame desire for vengeance: an explosive condition.” The song was written by a famous and influential social activist, Julia Ward Howe. Unobvious theme: But in most literary works of fiction, the theme is seldom so obvious. That is, generally a theme is not a moral nor a message, neither is it clearly conveyed in the title. When we finish reading a finely wrought story, it is easier to sum up the plot—to say what happens—than to describe the main idea. To say of James Joyce’s “Araby” that it is about a boy who goes to a bazaar to buy a gift for a young woman but arrives too late is to summarize plot, not theme. In many fine short stories, theme is the center, the moving force, the principle of unity. Clearly, such a theme is something more than the characters and events of the story. Most of the short stories challenge an easye theme. In Hemingway’s “A Clean, WellLighted Place,” as observed by Kennedy and Gioia, the events are rather simple—a young waiter manages to get rid of the old man from the caf233。 and the older waiter stops at a coffee bar on his way home—but while the events themselves seem relatively slight, the story as a whole is full of meaning. For a deep understanding of the meaning, we have to look to other elements of the story besides what happens in it: narrative, symbols, tone, the dialogue between the two waiters, the monologue of the older waiter, etc. Evidently the author intends us to pay more attention to the thoughts and feelings of the older waiter, the character whose words echo the author’s voice. One try on the theme may be: “The older waiter understands the old man and sympathizes with his need for a clean, welllighted place.” But here we are still talking about what happens in the story, though we are not summing up the plot. A theme is usually stated in general words. Another try sounds like this: “Solitary people need a orderly place where they can drink with dignity.” That is a little better. We have indicated that Hemingway’s story is more than merely about an old man and two waiters. We remember that at the end the story is entirely confined to the older waiter’s thoughts and perceptions. How do we understand his mediation on “nada,” nothingness, which bears so much emphasis? No good statement of the theme of the story can leave it out. Then we have still another try: “Solitary people need a place of refuge from their terrible awareness that their life (or perhaps, human life) is essentially meaningless.” Neither this nor any other statement of the story’s theme is unarguably appropriate, but the statement at least touches one primary idea that Hemingway seems to be driving at. After we read “A Clean, WellLighted Place,” we feel that there is such a theme, a unifying vision, even though we cannot reduce it to a tag and we may still vary in our opinion about, and statement of, the theme. Moral inferences drawn from most stories: Moral inferences may be drawn from most stories, no doubt, even when an author does not intend his/her story to be read this way. In “A Clean, WellLighted Place”, we feel that Hemingway is indirectly giving us advice for properly regarding and sympathizing the lonely, the uncertain, and the old. But obviously the story does not set forth a lesson that we are supposed to put into practice. We can say for sure that “A Clean, WellLighted Place” contains several themes and other statements could be made to take in Hemingway’s view of love, of munication betwee