Themes versus Morals

A distinction exists between the theme of a story and the moral of a story. It is easy to confuse these two elements of a story due to their common property that they are often inferred by the reader; however, they can vary vastly in goals, uniqueness to stories, and ways of expression. An author uses a theme to unify a story and its content, whereas a moral is used to present a virtue or ethical ideal to the reader. A story’s theme is also closely tied to the story itself and usually cannot be applied to other works of writing, while morals are more of a blanket statement and can relate to many stories at once. The way by which these two elements are expressed deviate as well: a theme is usually discovered by the reader after close analysis of the particular setting, characters, and plot events of a piece of literature, but morals are usually much more apparent and easy to detect. Such differences cause the theme and moral of a story to be incredibly diverse, as shown in short stories such as “The Guests of a Nation,” “The Story of an Hour,” and “What You Pawn I Will Redeem.”