FORMAL ELEMENTS

OF POETRY:
THEME AND TONE

Christinawati
English Department
Theme • Theme is a central idea, subject, or message
within a narrative.
• It is the underlying message that the poet/writer or
artist wants to convey.
• Themes can make a feature in poetry, a short
story, a novel, or even a work of art.
• It can be something as simple as love, or as
something more complex, such as human versus
nature.
Theme Theme can be divided into two categories:
1. A work's thematic concept is what readers "think the
work is about"
A work's thematic concept is the broader topic it
touches upon. It is stated in a Noun or Noun Phrase—
for instance:
Judgement, Love, Death, Revenge, Forgiveness

2. The thematic statement is being "what the work says

about the subject".
• Thematic statement, as its name, should be expressed in
the form of a statement with a subject and a verb.
• The theme must be a statement about the topic.
Theme Examples of the Theme
• Human’s judgement is imperfect.
• Love cannot be bought.
• Getting revenge on someone else will not fix your
problems.
• Learning to forgive is part of becoming an adult.
• Death must happen to everyone
*) One key characteristic of the theme is its universality,
which is to say that theme is an idea that is not only
applied to the poem or specific characters and events of
a novel or play, but it also expresses broader truths
about human experience that readers can apply to their
own lives.
Theme • The theme differs from the main idea because the main
idea describes what the text is mostly about. Supporting
details in a text can help lead a reader to the main idea.
• Finding a poem's theme works the same way. By figuring
out what the poem is about (Main Idea) and how the poet
feels about the subject of the poem (Voice) readers can
figure out the theme, or message in the poem.
• Theme is almost never stated explicitly.
• Oftentimes you can identify a work's theme by looking for
a repeating symbol, motif, or phrase that appears again
and again throughout a poem, since it often signals a
recurring concept or idea.
 Tone is
Tone • the writer’s or speaker’s attitude toward his/her subject,
audience, or him/herself;
• the emotional coloring/meaning of the work; or
• an extremely important part of the full meaning (Perrine 162).
In literature, it whatever conveys an attitude toward the person
being addressed.
We may never be able to know, of course, the poet’s true
feelings.
All we need to see are the feelings we are supposed to share
while reading the poem.
Strictly speaking, tone is an attitude but whatever in the
poem makes an attitude clear (Kennedy 17).
Tone • Tone is indicated by the inflections of the speaker’s voice.
Examples:
ecstatic sinister mocking happy
resigned despair joyful light
horrible hopeful incredulous sad
• The poet's attitude toward the poem's speaker, reader, and
subject matter, is interpreted by the reader.
• It is often described as a mood that pervades the
experience of reading the poem,
• it is sometimes created by the poem's vocabulary, metrical
regularity or irregularity, syntax, figurative language, and
rhyme.
Tone • The function of tone in poetry is to set the mood or feeling
of a poem for the reader.
• Tone typically allows the poet to control the way in which a
poem is to be read, or the attitude that the speaker in the
poem takes toward the subject of the poem.
• Two poems could both be written about a flower, for
example, but with two very different tones used to make
one a very positive poem and the other a much more
depressing work.
• The way in which the poet controls tone is typically through
diction and/or imagery.
 I met a traveller from an antique land,

Ozymandias Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

by Percy
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

Bysshe Shelly And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive,
stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!Nothing beside
remains.
Round the decayOf that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.