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Central Theme / Literature

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Remember, a Central Theme is not the same as An Aesop; a theme is a question, idea, topic or concept that the text explores, while an Aesop is a conclusion the author reaches about the theme or a lesson they wish to impart to the reader. As such, you should avoid phrasing your examples as conclusions.

Works with their own pages:

Individual examples:

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    #-L 
  • 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea:
    • Freedom, represented both by Nemo's quest to destroy the British Empire and Ned Land's quest to escape the Nautilus, which is ironically enough Nemo's idea of freedom.
    • It's impossible to truly cut yourself off from society, no matter that The World Is Just Awesome and the ocean is rich with plant, animal and marine life, man's real environment is with other people.
  • Accel World: Can our emotional flaws have the potential to become our greatest strengths?
  • Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: When is it all right to lie? Also, the adult world is full of hypocrisy, and you can learn more by following your personal conviction and listening to your conscience.
  • The Age of Innocence: It is very hard to set yourself apart from the society you grew up in and be The One Who Made It Out and you can never be sure if you are truly in love or Loving a Shadow.
  • Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: Growing Up Sucks but not growing up is worse.
  • All Quiet on the Western Front: War Is Hell.
  • All Tomorrows:
    • The enduring nature of human ingenuity, adaptability, and identity, even when robbed of everything.
    • History Repeats
    • Ideals lead to suffering.
  • American Gods: What do we "worship" in the modern world?
    • Also how myths influence culture and the people who live in it.
  • An American Tragedy: Regardless of The American Dream, most people are still defined by their upbringing and environment and trying to break the Sidekick Glass Ceiling is hard because the poor live by different rules than the rich.
  • And Then There Were None: The nature of guilt, retribution and justice.
  • Animal Farm:
  • Animorphs: There are no true winners in war. Alternatively, good and evil isn't as clean cut and simple as one might imagine. There is no such thing as complete righteousness, or complete heartlessness.
  • Isaac Asimov:
    • "C-Chute": Each of the characters has a reason why they don't want to be prisoners of the Kloros, whether it is due to their pride/honour or their fear. However, the character who actually takes action against the aliens doesn't give a reason until after the climax; he was homesick.
    • In "The Feeling of Power", the premise is a future when people no longer know how to do mathematics without a computer, and what happens when someone figures out how to do it again.
      "A time when people have forgotten arithmetic, and then someone discovers it again." Isaac Asimov, Science Fiction Favorites
    • "It's Such a Beautiful Day": The primary struggle that this story focuses on the natural world versus advances in technology. There are small resentments that people feel about the way that machines are taking over the "natural" ways. The teacher believes that the vocalizer, which reads the children's work in a mechanically perfect voice, lacks character and trains students "into a speech that was divorced from individuality and geared only to a mass-average accent and intonation." The Shrink believes that the psychic probe is "an obvious piece of quackery" and points out that "There were psychiatrists for centuries before there were probes." Even the young boy, Richard, starts to espouse the ideas of more limited technology as he becomes more comfortable with the outdoors, deciding that an automobile was the best type of "ancient vehicle" because of how slowly they traveled.
  • Baccano!: The appreciation of life regardless of its length.
  • Baka and Test: Summon the Beasts: The conflict between internal values: how important are grades? How important is friendship?
  • Banished from the Hero's Party: Should the circumstances of your birth, such as the family and talents you were born with, decide who you are and what you become? Ruti's blessing of the Hero makes her both destined to and compels her to save the world, even as she grows to hate doing so and the Blessing suppresses those negative feelings. On the smaller scale, Ademi's Bar Brawler Blessing makes him quick to anger and prone to violence, neither of which are good qualities to be a guard like he actually wants to be.
  • The Belgariad and the Mallorean aim for two key points: friendship and faith. The former is exemplified when it's pointed out that the Light is always spread across many people while the Dark always works alone; the latter comes to the fore when it's made clear that the primary job of the heroes is ultimately to replace a god.
  • The Bible is made up of several books with its own themes.
  • Books by Ben Mikaelsen often include characters with flaws and mental problems. Recurring themes include growth, understanding, wisdom, dealing with problems, and the love that shows beauty and friendship can be found anywhere.
  • The Birds (by Daphne du Maurier): Leadership and survival when things get rough.
  • Brave New World: The conflicts between 'happy' ignorance and 'unhappy' intellectual curiosity; can living a purely hedonistic and carefree existence truly be called living?
  • Bright Flame (Tales from Netheredge): Is it better to be safe than sorry? Is losing everything worth it for the chance to stay alive for long enough to Earn Your Happy Ending?
  • Blood Meridian: Can a continent with such a violent past as America, truly be at peace with itself? Also what is the nature of evil and how can mankind stand against it?
  • The Book Thief: Childhood innocence juxtaposed with the horrors of war.
  • Candide: Optimism is foolish and sets you up for defeat.
  • Carry On: Being The Chosen One doesn’t prevent you from struggling to learn your abilities or go through PTSD.
  • Casablanca: Innocence of youth and loyalty to authority (especially parental) even in the face of imminent death.
  • Catch-22: The fundamental insanity of war.
  • The Catcher in the Rye: Growing Up Sucks.
  • Charlie and the Chocolate Factory:
    • Reckless and loving parenting can be the difference between a rotten child and a humble child.
    • As long as you aren't greedy, good things will come to you.
  • The Charm Offensive: In order to find love, one needs to be willing to be vulnerable.
  • A Christmas Carol:
    • What causes a man to harden his heart against the world, and what it takes to redeem him.
    • It's never too late to change and to fix your mistakes.
  • The Chronicles of Amber: Too much order and too much chaos are both bad.
  • The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant: Accepting a harsh reality versus caring about ephemeral things. The consequences of making promises to others, for good or ill.
  • Circle of Magic: True magic is in human creativity and our creations. People with completely different social backgrounds and personalities can become the greatest of friends. You can make your own family.
  • A Clockwork Orange: The right to make choices, even bad, destructive choices, is what makes a human being a human being.
  • Conan the Barbarian: The fine line between civilization and savagery. Also, savagery always eventually wins.
  • Coraline: Don't expect your creations to obey you just because it was you that made them. (This applies especially if you're a parent.)
  • The Count of Monte Cristo: The hypocrisy of the "nobility". Also, the costs of seeking vengeance, even if justified.
  • Crime and Punishment: Does anyone have the right to pass judgment on their fellow men?
  • Cthulhu Mythos: Humanity is small and inconsequential in the larger universe. The stories written by Lovecraft himself also tended to focus on man's Hubris and the inevitable disasters that it leads to. Also, true understanding is dangerous for the mind and sanity. Humans have to go back to ignorance and barbarism or go insane if they begin to unveil the truth.
  • The Dark Crystal: As spoken by the urSkeks at the end, everything is interconnected: "We are all a part of each other."
  • The Demonata:
    • What do you do when you've lost everything? Simple. You just start again. This is literally the first line of the last book.
    • To do everything you can to defend your homeland and the people in it.
  • The Devil is a Part-Timer! - Can true evil even hope to thrive in the current day and age?
  • Diary of a Wimpy Kid::
    • The Ugly Truth: Puberty. The kids take a health class about their "changing bodies", Gammie is preparing to give Greg "the Talk", and Greg's mom going back to college makes Greg learn to take more responsibility, which is part of growing up.
    • Hard Luck: The concept of luck. The grown-ups become obsessed with finding Meemaw's wedding ring, hoping to find the lucky egg. Soon after, Greg starts using a Magic 8-Ball, becoming dependent on it for every decision. He eventually gets mad at it and throws it in his grandma's backyard, but goes back to retrieve it, and it leads him right to Meemaw's wedding ring.
  • The Discworld series has dozens of books in it, but there are definitely recurring themes that appear in different ways throughout.
    • It's not "somebody else's problem."
    • Most people aren't inclined towards great good or great evil; they just want their own lives to go smoothly.
    • Someone has to stand up for the ones with no voices.
  • The Divine Comedy: What reward or punishment awaits you in the afterlife?
  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Is emotion the only hallmark of being human? Does a machine become human if it has emotion? Can emotion be replicated?
  • Don Quixote:
    • The golden age of chivalry is not only an outdated concept but never existed outside the pages of a book. Real-Life doesn't have noble knights, damsels in distress and plucky common folk in need of saving, but people doing what it takes to survive in an unfair society.
    • While reality greatly influences art and storytelling, storytelling can also inspire and change reality. Anyone who thinks himself a hero from reading books of chivalry is crazy, but trying to live up to this obsolete code of chivalry in the hard real world despite repeated failures is way more heroic than any fictional knight could ever be.
  • Dracula:
    • Sexual predation and the conflict between lust and repression.
    • More broadly, it's the classic Romantic VS Enlightenment argument; specifically "old world" (magic/superstition) VS "new world" (science/technology). Dracula is a gothic novel after all, which leans heavily towards romanticism. Dracula himself has the edge throughout most of the story because his existence is not even fathomable by members of this "new world." The most terrifying ability of Dracula(to a Victorian Brit) is his ability to cause sophisticated modern women to slip back into "savage" sexuality.
  • Dragon Age:
    • The Stolen Throne: The circumstances that causes one to rebel no matter the cost.
    • The Calling: Learning to deal with the reality of one's life circumstances in the present, no matter the regrets they have or the mistakes they've made in the past.
    • Asunder: Conflicting belief systems and what occurs when they clash against each other.
    • The Masked Empire: The long history of abuse of power and oppression in its various forms.
    • Last Flight: The upsides and downsides of ruthlessness.
  • The Dresden Files:
    • The temptation of power and how easy it is to be corrupted by it and misuse it. Also, your actions has consequences, if you act out of anger or don't think them through, it can make a bad situation even worse.
    • Regardless of whether or not you intended them to occur, the direct consequences of your actions are your responsibility.
  • Dune: How the descendants, and eventually the entire universe, reckons with a man's legacy. Also the destructive and positive sides of religion and especially the messiah figure.
  • Durarara!!:
    • Love is something that motivates everyone, even if for some people it becomes rather cracked and twisted. Whether it's good or evil, selfish or selfless, sane or insane, one-sided or mutual, everybody's in love with someone or something, and even if you're a freak or an outcast there's probably someone out there capable of loving you.
    • Going too far in your attempts at making life more exciting for you and your friends have dire consequences, as seen with Mikado in x2.
    • Keeping secrets from or avoiding present issues with your True Companions can also lead to trouble.
  • Eleanor & Park: The Power of Love doesn’t fix everything in the couple’s lives, such as abusive family members or personal alienation. But having someone in your life who understands can help you get through it.
    • If you’re in an increasingly unsafe environment, get out of there. Otherwise, it will only get worse.
  • Ella Enchanted: How can you assert yourself when you must obey every command given to you?
  • Ellen Hopkins' books have a general theme of that being a teenager is being part of a huge Crapsack World. Many of the teens in her books have horrible lives and find solace in meaningless sex, drug abuse, and suicidal behavior.
  • The Elric Saga: Order Versus Chaos and how too much of either is bad.
  • Emma: Never assume you know what's best for other people; you may not even know what's best for yourself.
  • The Enormous Crocodile: The consequences of failing to keep your devious schemes a secret from those outside of your circle.
  • The Erast Fandorin series of detective novels follows master detective Fandorin from 1876 to 1914. While each novel has a different mystery that Fandorin eventually solves, the Central Theme is the decline and fall of Tsarist Russia. The government is either corrupt or incompetent, reformers with good ideas aren't heeded, Patriotic Fervor leads the country into disastrous mistakes, and in later books, left-wing terrorists and rebels play an increasingly prominent role.
  • The Familiar of Zero: When one rises above their intended station, it may inspire others to change their narrow-minded worldview in a world ruled by the nobility who hold a low opinion of, and often oppress those born in the peasantry.
  • The Fault in Our Stars:
    • Some infinities are bigger than other infinities, and you can find a forever even in numbered days.
    • Short lives are by no means empty lives.
  • Fahrenheit 451: Ambivalent acceptance of big changes without any independent critical thinking sets us up for self-destruction.
  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: The American Dream died and the hippie counterculture of the 60's, full of optimism and hope for change ended up killing itself due to all the drug abuse and irresponsibility.
  • Fifth Business: Not everyone is the hero of their own story.
  • Frankenstein:
    • The conflict between creator and creation, parent and child.
    • The terrible consequences of Playing God, and the true meaning of responsibility.
    • Romanticism Versus Enlightenment: If one is able to create life artificially, should they? When you create something, how much control do you maintain over it? (The latter is a timeless theme. Think about scientists that establish concepts either benevolently or neutrally that are horrified to find out that they have been adapted as a weapon, etc.)
  • Freakonomics claims to be an aversion - instead of one unifying theme, it has about half a dozen, listed in the introduction. However, they could be summed up as "Knowledge is power". Also, "People are stupid." The sequel Super Freakonomics claims that the real theme of both books is that people respond to incentives ("Incentives matter" is their phrasing) but they don't always respond in ways that are obvious or manifest.
  • El Filibusterismo: the emptiness of revolutionary violence without noble aspirations.
  • A Frozen Heart: The book expands on Frozen's message about The Power of Love, showing how childhood experiences can mold one's personal opinions on love of all types. It also asks whether Love Is a Weakness that causes people to make poor choices in life and is only good for childish fairy-tale romances, or can it become something that can redeem people, isn't limited only to the fairy-tale romances that cynics dismiss, and make them idealistic once again.
  • The First Law: Can a man truly change? Even if he changes, how long can he stay changed before reverting to his old ways?
  • Full Metal Panic!: Can a soldier truly learn to be a normal civilian again?
  • Gate: The end of the old-school ways of conflict, and the rise of modern warfare.
  • The Girl from the Miracles District: The importance of family and identity.
  • Gravity Falls: Journal 3: This expands more on the themes of trust and family from the series, but also adds the message that a "lone wolf" mentally is harmful and could cause long term consequences that affect both yourself and the people around you.
  • Goblin Slayer:
    • Respect the people who handle the little things. They are the reason those problems stay small.
    • Reconnecting with others after a traumatic experience.
  • Gone:
    • The series as a whole: All humans, even the supposedly innocent and good, are capable of doing horrible, evil things in the right (or wrong) circumstances.
    • We as a society underestimate how strong children and teenagers can be, and just how much they go through on a daily basis and how they survive on their journey to becoming adults. This appears to be the author's interpretation of it.
  • Good Omens: Humans are neither naturally good nor naturally evil-they can be both.
  • The Great Gatsby:
    • Is the American Dream really all it's cracked up to be?
    • All the money in the world won't make people love you.
  • The Grapes of Wrath: The conflict between people and the systems they operate within. Also, what constitutes family, and what causes them to thrive or collapse.
  • The Green Mile: You can't help someone that doesn't want to be helped.
  • Gulliver's Travels: How Earth is a Crapsack World and it's inescapable.
  • The Handmaid's Tale: Intolerance and systemic injustice desensitize us to horrible things.
  • Harry Potter:
    • How do the circumstances of our childhoods effect who we become, for good or ill? Harry and Voldemort have similar backgrounds but Harry chose to be a good person while Voldemort chose to become a megalomaniac. Although he’s a good person, Dumbledore’s childhood made him secretive and manipulative. Snape was bullied as a kid but turned into a bully himself as an adult, etc.
    • For her part, J. K. Rowling says that the central theme is death: "The theme of how we react to death, how much we fear it. Of course, I think which is a key part of the book because Voldemort is someone who will do anything not to die. He's terrified of death. And in many ways, all of my characters are defined by their attitude to death and the possibility of death."
    • Whether certain values — courage, intelligence, hard work and cunning — can be easily sorted and identified. People can be brave in all sorts of unexpected ways, even the Bookworm can't know everything, and everyone needs a good deal of cunning and hard work to survive. Even the best magic in the world can't identify What You Are in the Dark and there are many cases, where people "sort too soon" and judge too readily.
    • How do you move on from past mistakes? Do you learn Misery Builds Character or do you double down on past behavior? Can you learn to forgive yourself or do you carry the burden around for the rest of your life?
    • The Power of Love and how it lets people be their best selves and stand strong even in the darkest of times.
  • Haruhi Suzumiya:
    • What you mean to others.
    • In a mundane world, what does it mean to have adventures?
  • Heart of Darkness: The evils of colonialism, no matter how pretty its dressed up. Specifically, colonialism corrupts the colonizer.
    • Evil and 'savagery' exists in every person, and how when taken away from civilization, people are more prone to indulge in their more depraved desires.
  • Hieroglyphics: Stated to be the most important part of constructing a story, so vital that it should be done before anything else. Even if the other elements (plot, construction, and writing style) are all lackluster, a story with a strong theme (what he calls "idea") can still qualify as literature, though just barely.
  • High School D×D: How far would you go for the ones you love?
  • The Hobbit: The tension between the thrill of adventure and the comforts of home.
  • Horatio Hornblower: A thorough exploration of The Chains of Commanding for naval captains of the Wooden Ships and Iron Men era, particularly the incredible formality and isolation the position entails. Also, War Is Hell in every detail, from brutal and random death in battle to conscription and picking weevils out of your food.
  • The Hound of the Baskervilles: The conflict between the fearful superstitions of the past and modern empirical logic and rationality.
  • How to Train Your Dragon:
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame: How do you deal with sin when it enters your life?.
  • The Hunger Games: Celebrity culture, marketing, the power of symbols. Emphasized by the real-world marketing of the novel, preferring the love story to the social commentary in almost an exact mirror of the Capitol marketing the Games.
  • Hyouka - What constitutes as a "rose-colored life"? Is our current situation fine? Is there something we want more?
  • I Am Legend: Man's ability to adapt to his environment. Alternatively, every Hero is the Villain in someone's story, Just as every Villain is a Hero to themselves.
  • The Idiot: Is there a place left in the world for kindness?
  • InCryptid: The bonds of family, both biological and otherwise, and the importance of respecting and preserving nature rather than acting like humans are the center of the universe.
  • Interview with the Vampire: Isolation. How one can be alone even in a never-ending sea of people.
  • Ivanhoe: All Love Is Unrequited.
  • The Island of Doctor Moreau: The savagery in the hearts of men.
  • James Bond:
    • The lack of difference in the method used by the Designated Hero and the Card-Carrying Villain.
    • What is Britain's role in the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union? How would this impact Anglo-American relations?
    • The more recent novels even ask whether 007 can adapt to the post-Cold War environment.
  • Jane Eyre: The Hidden Depths possessed by even those who seem plain, average and uninteresting on the surface.
  • Kidnapped: Some causes are just lost. Fight the battles that you can actually win.
  • Kamikaze Girls: Non-comformity, living by your own rules and principles, and what it means to be a rebel.
  • Kaze no Stigma: Spirituality and Religion.
  • Kino's Journey:
    • The rules we live by.
    • Is there any underlying point to the stories, any unifying concept? Perhaps. It could be seen as an extended lesson in the law of unintended consequences.
  • Kokoro Connect: Hiding and accepting our flaws, and the Power of Trust.
  • KonoSuba: The world isn't perfect and the people in it definitely aren't perfect either, but they still both have wonderful things worth treasuring regardless.
  • Legend of the Galactic Heroes:
  • Lensman: War always changes. The most powerful tool in warfare need not be a weapon.
  • The Little Prince: Step away from an adult's view of the world and appreciate the beauty around you.
  • Lolita:
    • Can we sympathize with a man who has done the unthinkable?
    • Can we trust people just because they are intelligent and articulate?
    • Was post-war suburban America really the shiny, happy place it wanted to be portrayed as? Is European and American culture incompatible?
    • Also, on a more explicit level: how dangerous and seductive sexual predators can be when they justify their crimes with victim blaming and theatrically indulge in self-pity.
  • Looking for Alaska: How does one person's life affect others?
  • Lord of the Flies:
    • The loss of innocence. Man is not inherently good.
    • You kids would like to do as you please but you're still savages at heart, so shut up and listen to your parents and teachers for another 5-10 years so we can complete the task of civilizing you.
    • Alternatively, children are reflections of the values taught to them by their parents and their institutions. Raise them in a world of Might Makes Right, rampant racism and imperialism and they are going to create that same society when no one is looking.
  • The Lord of the Rings:
    • Even those imagined insignificant can change the world.
    • Evil Cannot Comprehend Mercy, evil can only corrupt, and you can't plan for everything.
    • Some must be willing to give up everything they have in order to preserve it for others.
    • The temptations and uses of Power.
    • Courage in the face of hopelessness.
    • To paraphrase Gandalf, "in difficult times, it's common to wish such things weren't happening to you or your generation. The only thing you can do is decide what you'll do with the time you have."
  • Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions!:
    • Running away from and facing our problems.
    • Also, the challenges of having to grow up.
  • Love in the Time of Cholera: The nature of love and The Power of Love, whether we are truly in love or Loving a Shadow? Does love make you noble or does it make you selfish? And is it truly possible to love somebody even when they don't return your affections.

    M-Z 
  • Machado de Assis:
    • Uma Senhora (A Lady): The pain and inevitability of aging to those who are vain.
    • A Igreja do Diabo (The Church of the Devil): The human tendency to do the opposite of what they're told to do.
  • Madame Bovary: Life is no fantasy but it's so dull that people will eventually turn to fantasy to find fullfillment.
  • The Magic Treehouse: The value and importance of knowledge and literacy.
  • The Man in the High Castle: The nature of reality; is the world around us merely a dream?
  • The Maze Runner Trilogy: Running. The protagonists don't get to stop until the end of The Death Cure.
  • The Martian:
    • Science, ingenuity, teamwork, and a sense of humor are invaluable in stressful situations.
    • Also, never stop looking for a solution, no matter how hopeless the situation seems. Just because you don't have a solution now doesn't mean you won't find one later.
  • The Metamorphosis: The expendablity of men.
  • Midnight's Children: The amazing potential India had after independence and how it gets scattered and wasted by society.
  • The Mirror of Her Dreams: Every person's ability have an impact on the world, for better or worse, no matter how insignificant they feel.
  • Les Misérables: The line between respectable people and criminal behavior depends entirely on the values of society, a criminal can have honor and an incorruptible policeman can be a bad man without realizing it.
  • Mistborn: The Original Trilogy: It's better to trust and be hurt than to never trust at all, and though trust is often betrayed, it's just as often rewarded; fight for what you believe in, even when it looks like you can't possibly win, and you can change the world; all actions have consequences, even if those consequences aren't always readily apparent; there's always another secret. Each book also has as a central theme the exploration and deconstruction of a particular High Fantasy trope: the Evil Overlord in The Final Empire, prophecy in The Well of Ascension, and The Chosen One in The Hero of Ages.
  • Moby-Dick: The dangers of pursuing an unwinnable quest.
    • If you begrudge and seek revenge for all the bad things the universe throws your way, you'll only cause further harm to yourself and those around you.
    • The surface of the visible world contains only a small portion of what exists and human endeavor (such as harvesting whale oil for cosmetic products) is absurd in the scale of the universe.
  • Mordant's Need: No matter how small and irrelevant you feel, your actions matter, for good or ill. Don't worry about how you can't save the world all on your own, but just do what you can about the things that you care about.
  • The Most Dangerous Game: The conflict between predator and prey.
  • Mother Night: How the seemingly "fake" identities that we adopt can become part of our true selves, and the harm that can cause. (Or, as the author himself put it: we are who we pretend to be, so we must be very careful about who we pretend to be.)
  • My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!: The value of love, both platonic and romantic.
  • My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, as I Expected:
    • Is there such a thing as a truly honest person? What are the effects of lying in society?
    • The difficulty of solving problems instead of avoiding them.
    • Also explores the complicated inner workings of relationships and social acceptance in general.
  • Nero Wolfe:
    • The importance of structure and routine in maintaining a healthy intellect.
    • The distinction between physical laziness and intellectual laziness, and how the former is far preferable to the latter; Wolfe is often dismissed as lazy and not doing anything worthwhile during his investigations, but inevitably comes to the correct solution to the mystery merely from sitting in his chair having a good think about things after having the facts placed before him. The frantic activity of the police (and, on occasion, Archie), however, might seem productive, but it's often just going up a blind alley and fulfilling no useful purpose. Running around hectically may seem productive, but it's useless if not combined with a solid intellectual reason for why you're doing those things.
  • Never Let Me Go: Sentience and the morality of creating a person for a specific purpose they have no say in.
  • Night has two main themes: Evil exists in many forms and many places, and, as long as you believe, you faith can survive anything.
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four:
    • How do you live with what is wrong, when you are under pressure to believe it's right?
    • The fear that even memory is not safe from the tyrant's meddling.
    • Are people slaves to their own fears?
  • No Country for Old Men: There's always been evil in the world. There is no happy place in the past where everything was perfect. That said, does America still have a place for an old man who still believes this to be true?
  • Northanger Abbey: Being Wrong Genre Savvy can have bad consequences on yourself and the people you care about.
  • Nostromo: The corruption of the material world and how even the most noble individuals will suffer and fail on account of it. And like all of Joseph Conrad's books, What You Are Inthe Dark.
  • The Notebook - How persistence pays off.
  • Number the Stars: How can you maintain your innocence as one of the darkest chapters in human history plays out around you?
  • The Odyssey: Surviving requires cunning, daring and ruthlessness. Even when you have nothing left, you still have your wits and you can find a way to escape any trap, even ones set by the Gods.
  • Oliver Twist: How the older generation guides the younger, both for good and for ill.
  • Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit: What does it mean to grow up in a culture you respected only to realize that it is harmful to other aspects of your identity?
  • Oresuki: Teens Are Monsters, but they aren't irredeemable.
  • Otherland: Dealing with old age, personal irrelevance and the prospect of death. Also, and as a response to the first: children and parenthood.
  • Our Last Crusade or the Rise of a New World: Hatred, rejection, and neglect for the other side will always be what fuels war. Mutal understanding, common ground, and even love are what are necessary for ending wars.
  • Our Wives Under the Sea: The hardest part of Moving Beyond Bereavement isn't the initial loss. It's the feeling of isolation that comes with accepting your loved one's absence from your life, and how the people who support you will eventually move on before you have. At that point, the only thing you can do is let go of the memories and move on.
    Juna: I think that the thing about losing someone isn't the loss but the absence of afterward. D'you know what I mean? The endlessness of that. [...] My friends were sad, people who knew my sister were sad, but everyone moves on after a month. It's all they can manage. It doesn't mean they weren't sad, just that things kept going or something, I don't know. [...] It's hard when you look up and realize that everyone's moved off and left you in that place by yourself. Like they've all gone on and you're there still, holding on to this person you're supposed to let go of.
  • Överenskommelser
    • Money and titles won't automatically give you happiness.
    • No matter how much you want to spare other people from being hurt, and no matter how much you yourself were hurt once, you have to trust your lover and tell him/her that you love him/her.
    • Don't let your fears or your good will towards your friends or your stupid pride destroy your happiness.
  • Paper Towns: The Manic Pixie Dream Girl is a myth; rather than putting people on pedestals, get to know them for who they truly are.
  • The Pet Girl of Sakurasou:
    • Always seek to better yourself, and never give up, even when you fail.
    • A lot of emphasis is put on "talent" and it impacts.... how much does talent, as we know it, matter in trying to live your passion? How do your insecurities regarding someone more talented than yourself affect you?
  • Pet Sematary: It is better to let go of departed loved ones than to try to bring them back. Or as King himself put it, "Sometimes, dead is better."
  • Peter Pan:
    • Childhood is fleeting so cherish those memories well.
    • Growing Up Sucks but not growing up is worse.
  • The Picture of Dorian Gray: You can't escape the consequences of your selfishness and hedonism forever.
  • The Pillars of the Earth: The legacies parents leave for their children.
  • The Princess Bride:
    • The nature of stories and what effects they can have on the real world.
    • The conflict between the idealistic worlds of fantasy and the struggles of reality, and what can happen when the two start to mix.
  • Pride and Prejudice: Never judge a book by its cover.
  • Reign of the Seven Spellblades: "What are we as a society doing to ourselves and our children?" The core conceit of being "consumed by the spell", more than just being an interesting way to die, is a metaphorical critique of self-destructive obsession. The mage world as a whole is obsessed with getting ahead and pushing the envelope of what magic is capable of, regardless of the harm done to humanity and the world, and lionize those among them who work themselves into an early grave. And rather than leaving a better world for their children, mages abuse their desire to please their parents to turn them into living tools for their own ambitions, while the world as a whole gets harder and harder to live in.
  • Requiem for a Dream: The self-destructive path of drug addiction.
  • The Rest Of Us Just Live Here: Everyone’s story is important, even the ordinary ones.
  • The Rising of the Shield Hero:
    • There are good reasons to become a cynical, misogynistic prick, but you still need to grow out of it.
    • Treating someone like trash is never a good idea. You may just need their help the most.
    • How should you treat a society that betrayed you?
    • Actions speak louder than words. And by extension, thoughtless actions have very real consequences.
  • The Road:
    • Day to day survival as the greatest victory of all.
    • Hold onto your humanity when even hope is gone.
  • Robinson Crusoe: Man's need for companionship.
  • 'Salem's Lot: The darkness hiding beneath small town idyll (a common theme in most of Stephen King's work, actually).
  • The Satanic Verses: The clash between sacred and profane culture, the divine and satanic notions of culture and how it gets inverted thanks to the immigrant experience.
  • Sense and Sensibility: The conflict between the emotional sides of our personalities and the rational sides, and the importance of achieving a workable balance between both in order to find happiness.
  • A Series of Unfortunate Events:
    • Independence, and the dangers of relying on flawed people to take care of you.
    • The second half of the series develops another theme, that everyone has hidden depths and performs acts of evil in their lifetimes regardless of how good they might be.
    • The prequel series, All the Wrong Questions, has a related theme: at what point does having a good reason stop being an excuse for doing terrible things? Where's the line between an Anti-Hero and a bad person?
  • Sex Robots and Vegan Meat has two:
    • Using technology to solve social problems does nothing to solve the original problem, and can create new problems.
    • Technologies that are being developed by men are likely to disproportionately affect women.
  • Shakugan no Shana:
    • The value of Life, both in general, as well as the value of single lives in the face of a greater good, and not just regarding humans. Torches are remnants of humans who have lost their Existence. Do they have value? Do humans have value at all in comparison to those who protect them, or in the face of an apocalypse?
    • Identity. There is more to who you are than just what you are. You are not just "a human", or "a Flame Haze" or "a Torch".
    • The reasons why someone would be unable, or unwilling, to be together with their loved one.
  • Sherlock Holmes: There is no mystery out there that cannot be solved with the application of logic and empirical thought.
  • Shiki:
  • Shimoneta: Fanservice is still needed in society and censorship cannot be taken too far. Or else tomorrow's children will be stunted in a bad way.
  • The Shining: Don't let your personal demons destroy your loved ones.
  • The Song of Achilles: Undying love and devotion.
  • A Song of Ice and Fire: More than a few:
    • Extremism is dangerous - fire may be deadly, but ice will kill you just as dead. Too-rigid insistence on the law or morality is as dangerous as too little regard for it. It isn't enough to be a good man to be The Good King and The Good Chancellor while pure ruthlessness and unchallenged evil will enjoy, at best, short term victories but produce nothing long-lasting.
    • Is war ever justified? Who is it that really pays the price for wars?
    • How can a society praise and celebrate women as something to protect on one hand, and then turn and subject them to submission and rape on the other? How do these women feel about their much more restrictive gender norms/roles? How do they feel about their survival being entirely in the hands of men? What about women who actively choose to oppose these norms?
    • Nobody is what they seem, everyone has Hidden Depths and even your close family members will have secrets that you probably won't find out. Most of the really heroic actions are The Greatest Story Never Told and history is Written by the Winners.
    • Is a political system based on inheritance truly in the best interest of the realm?
    • History is always moving forward, and nothing ever really ends. One person's happy ending is often just the beginning of somebody else's road of trials.
    • And as Word of God said originally, is it possible to be a good person and a good ruler? What does it mean to take a moral stance politically or try to govern in a way that people believe is right by their morality?
    • Tales of Dunk and Egg: What does chivalry truly mean? Can the knightly ethos solve problems where there aren't damsels to rescue and villains to kill?
  • The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The duality at the heart of man and the conflict between his loftier aspirations and his base desires.
  • Sword Art Online:
    • Can virtual reality change the way we experience love and friendship?
    • The choices people make in their fantasy lives are a reflection of their character. It's never "just a game".
  • The Talmud: Using our minds, we can find the presence of God in our daily lives.
  • Tasakeru: What is humanity, and can it be found in even a world where humans never existed?
  • The Tell-Tale Heart: Out of sight doesn't mean out of mind.
  • The Three Musketeers: Dedicating your life to a cause larger than yourself.
  • The Time Machine: The consequences and evolutionary directions of a society organised according to a strict class system.
  • That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime: The joy of building a community.
  • Their Eyes Were Watching God: Coming-of-age does not stop in your adolescence; new lessons about life, love, and yourself are constantly presenting themselves.
  • Things Fall Apart: The cultures destroyed by colonialism deserve a voice.
  • To Kill a Mockingbird: Racism-based conflict from a child's point of view.
  • To Sir, with Love: The effects of anti-black discrimination in postwar England on every aspect of a black man's life, from everyday chemistries to finding a job.
  • Tolkien's Legendarium:
    • Throughout the story there is a continuing theme that being evil will end up destroying you, even if you started out with noble intentions. For example, Sauron began by wanting to bring order to the world and being one of the greatest Maia. However by joining Morgoth to do so he became more ruthless and cruel, ending up becoming the most evil being after Morgoth. Similarly Saruman starts out as the greatest of the Wizards, but after joining Sauron (with the intention of betraying him once he gets the ring), is cast from the Istari, loses most of his power, and ends up using his power to bully and oppress Hobbits For the Evulz.
    • "Nothing is evil in the beginning. Even Sauron was not so." When Sam sees one of the Southrons who fought for Sauron die he wonders whether he was really evil and would have preferred to stay at home. Tolkien had himself criticised the way that during the war civilians were being killed in the enemy countries and found the idea of judging whole races bad horrific.
    • War is Hell. Even if your cause was actually just, it will lead to death, destruction and often even greater evils.
    • The Fall of Númenor: The story of the Second Age has two main ideas running through the text: Firstly, death and decay are saddening but inevitable parts of life. Fighting against the natural course of things will not get anything you want and ultimately won't end well for you or anybody. Second, pride, hubris and ego are the ultimate cause (or at the very least a contributing factor) of most of the life's problems. Listening to your ego is ALWAYS a bad idea. Listening to whoever is feeding it is an even WORSE idea, since they seldom have your interests in mind.
  • Toradora!: The way that love hides in plain sight, eluding your efforts to find it until you realize it was right under your nose the whole time.
  • The various Tortall Universe series can be summed up as follows.
  • Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs:
    • Karma. Both in the Laser-Guided Karma sense of villains getting punished, but also having Leon and Marie constantly punished for selfishness, and rewarded for selflessness.
    • The story explores the effects of children being spoiled quite a lot, accompanied by related issues such as Parental Favoritism, sibling-complexes, and Sibling Rivalry. Just about every variety of spoiled and sheltered personality imaginable is present, and the consequences explored.
  • The Turn of the Screw: It's easy for genuine love and concern to be twisted into madness and death.
  • The Twelve Kingdoms:
    • Don’t try to fulfill everyone’s expectations. Follow your heart.
    • Only children cry out of self-pity.
    • Don’t blame others; instead, seek to improve yourself.
    • Sense of purpose.
  • The Twilight Saga - Can one contain his or her baser urges?
  • Ulysses:
    • A single day in the life of a modern man is as exciting and dangerous as the whole of The Odyssey.
    • Also the nature of identity, whether people are individuals who can think for themselves, or whether they are products of their environment whose ideas and beliefs come entirely from society, from religion, from nationalism. What makes us different and truly unique?
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin: Slaves are human beings.
  • Military-themed science fiction thriller Victoria has several:
    • The alienating nature of modernity, and how various ideologies and groups of people attempt to respond to it.
    • The nature of power, how it is earned and exercised, and how much of it is really illusory.
    • Human nature, its character and its malleability (or lack thereof), as well as the theory and practice of how "equal" men truly are in various ways.
    • The nature of war and the struggle for existence, what men will do to survive and the price they pay for it.
    • And finally, the power of Truth, which is the core theme that underlies them all. Truth and honesty set men free: an order built on untruth makes men miserable and will fail, one built on truth makes men glad and will endure.
  • Universal Monsters: Discussed in book 6, as Nina — with a little help from Joe — explains to Captain Bob that she feels love is the actual central theme of each of the Universal Horror movies, with each of the monsters being motivated by the desire to find someone to love and who would love them back. Later on, Nina revises her theory, thinking that maybe the real central theme, and what drives the monsters, is not just love but loneliness. Captain Bob, meanwhile, thinks her initial theory's nuts. In the epilogue, he admits that he's still not sure Nina was right, but he's closer to believing it now.
  • Violet Evergarden:
    • The importance of communication and letting your feelings clear to others.
    • Everyone has scars, but it's important to move on.
  • Völsunga saga: Being a hero is megacool, but it also sucks immensely. Or: Heroes, they don't grow old happily.
  • The War of the Worlds: The consequences of ruthless, uncaring imperialism on those subjected to it.
  • Welcome to the NHK:
  • The Witcher and its video games: The world is filled with monsters, and humans are oftentimes the worst ones of all.
  • A Wrinkle in Time: The Power of Love is vital to nearly every aspect of existence.
    • Also, "equal" and "alike" are not the same.
  • The Wonderful Wizard of Oz: The power that resides in all of us.
  • World War Z:
    • Humans Are Bastards.
    • Finding a balance between the independent spirit and the human collective.
  • Wuthering Heights: The past — upbringing, inheritance, memories — never really goes away, it takes on a life of its own, and some people either won't or can't let go and move on.
  • The Zodiac Series:

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