What is the difference between main idea and theme

The former is what the readers think that the work is about, whereas the latter is what the work says about the subject. Identifying the theme can be very simple; it may even be possible to sum it up in just one word such as love, betrayal, death, fear etc. It can be easily said that the theme involves the main concept or the lesson learned from the story. For example if the story is about a person who fails at something due to not being careful, then the theme is merely the consequences of being careless.

A very important difference between the theme and the main idea is that the main idea of a story may be unique in most cases. This means that the main idea behind the story is only provided by that story and will be unique most of the times although not always.

In contrast to this, the theme is never unique. If the theme is love, there are countless stories with the same theme. Moving on, the main idea can or cannot be directly stated in the text. For example, the main idea of a short story may be found in the first paragraph as the topic sentence.

The theme, however is only seldom expressed in words within the story. It goes beyond chapters and paragraphs. To understand the theme, one needs to read and comprehend the entire story. Main idea-overall idea of the passage or a text, it is very closely related to the Topic of the passage and in some cases directly stated in the topic sentence of the text; theme is the central topic that a text has-two main categories of themes; thematic concept and thematic statement.

The main idea usually comes from the plot as well as the characters of a plot; the theme depends on the whole story and is the message conveyed. The main idea of a story is mostly unique, the theme is seldom unique. Summer Institute. RLTA Awardees. RLTA Resources. RLTA Application. About Us. Meet the Team. Board of Directors.

Associates Board. Program Partners. School Partners. Distinguishing Main Idea from Theme. Learning Center. Subscribe to Ask Smekens. Ask Smekens. January 04, For informational texts, introduce main idea with the concept of newspaper headlines. Examples of themes within Cinderella include: One should never quit wishing, because dreams really can come true.

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