Strategies for determining themes in a story

1. Strategy #1: Find a story’s topics
To determine a story’s theme, it helps to first name some
topics or central ideas. Your novel will likely connect to
several topics. Think about the struggles the character is
going through and how those struggles end up to help you
figure out what those topics may be.

2. Now, you try it!
List 5 (or more) topics that are important in Freak the Mighty so far.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

3. Strategy #2: From seed to theme
Look at the topics you identified
using strategy #1. Next, ask
yourself, “What is the author
saying about this big idea?” or
“What might the lesson be?” and
use the topic word in a sentence
to answer the question(s).
Example: TOPIC = Hope
THEME = Having hope can get
us through the darkest of times.

4. Now, you try it!
Topic Possible Theme Evidence (Quotes with page numbers)