Thematic Structure - How Theme Can Structure a Novel

The novel is a flexible form. It is big, fluid, and deep. If all forms of writing are bodies of water, then the novel is a big river like the Amazon, the Mississippi, or the Nile. It can flow in any direction, forward in time, backwards in time, back and forth from past to present and even into the future.

This is all true because there is space to do so much in a novel. And, just as on the Mississippi, there are times when, as the writer, you can't see all the way across.

Size, when you are the artisan creating the object, can be a daunting challenge. Where do you start with a novel? How can you plan out your book so that you don't get overwhelmed? How can you construct a plan without having written the whole book in the first place?

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Theme can be a great guide for structuring your novel. Consider the novels Heart of Darkness and Absalom! Absalom!

These are very different books in many ways, but their similarities are striking. Each book takes theme as its organizing principle. Each book also considers the great capital theme as an object that can be viewed, as if physically, from different angles.

Conrad begins his tale on the ocean, in a harbor, where civility reigns. His theme is, as I take it, the truth of human nature, especially human nature as man's existential, spiritual identity. Over the course of Heart of Darkness Conrad explores the question of whether man is animal or mind or, if a combination of both, which side will win in a fight.

The theme moves the novel from the sea into a river toward the heart of a dark jungle in Africa where the people living along the river are described as "savages". Rotting meat, arrows, calls from the dark, all haunt the adventure toward the source of the river.

The source of the river is where Kurtz resides and it is also where the answer to Conrad's question might reside. The protagonist Marlow is drawn inexorably into the dark, into doubt about what he is; what it means to be a human being.

When seen formally, the novel can be described in the following way. The theme is exercised first with the analysis of civility. What is civilized man like? What are his ways, his hopes, and his fears?

Then the book turns to the "savages" and asks what are their ways, hopes, and fears. And finally, the novel approaches its great theme with the question of what happens to a person who has passed through both stages, civility and savagery?

Will he be savage or civil? Will he be animal or mind?

It's really quite simple when you see the book formally as an exploration of theme in this way. Nowise does the novel become less compelling by recognizing the composition of the storyline. In fact, Heart of Darkness is more engaging when read with the theme of human nature in mind. Taking offense at the descriptions of the savages becomes secondary to considering the formal role* that the peoples along the river serve in the thematic structure of the novel.

The thematic structure as method is good if you have characters in mind along with a rich central question to explore.

In Absalom! Absalom! Faulkner takes up a kind of Garden of Eden question, using the theme of inevitable original sin invading history, however fresh and new and clean, and repeating itself over generations.

This novel presents discussions from multiple perspectives which share a single goal in common - the discovery of the truth, which is the seed of evil that was planted in the Sutpen line. Where and when was evil married to the family line? Who would expiate that sin, if anyone, and how can anyone know the truth when history and time get in the way, shifting perspectives collide, and death takes the characters as well as the story-tellers at the end of the day?

As Heart of Darkness took as its structure a steady progression of perspectives on the central question, Absalom! Absalom! does the same. The theme is viewed and narrated by age, by youth, by intimate participants in the concerned story and by outsiders functioning on hear-say.

Though this thematic structure method has the potential to become pedantic and obvious, a good novelist can steer the way to the end and create a powerful reading experience.

Theme here functions as the waters flowing from the mountain, forming a river, and the river must find its own course. Importantly, the motion of the water is already decided. It will find its own level. It will find the sea. Because, that is what rivers do.

*Perhaps the use of Africa as the land of savages is unfortunate. Personally I am offended by passages in Faulkner, Conrad, and Warren where racism is presented as just another part of the status quo, a part of history not to be denied. I agree that history is not to be denied. In my opinion the accurate depiction of history in the novel is a virtue that will last because it is one good way to see the changes our society makes. I'm offended anyway. The nature of the affront is apropos to the discussion of this essay because it stems from the idea that these novelists are presenting an answer to the question "what is man?" When black people or any people are de-humanized and treated as props, derided as savages, and set up only to be knocked down, I can't help but be hurt by the contrast between the sublime project of the novel and the profane by-products of the prose.