Surface Plot vs Themes

I'll admit that I am not a literature major but when you are writing or a critiquing a story, should you focus on themes,ideas or the surface plot? Here is what I got from the Other wiki:

I know not everyone had a particular theme in mind but it sometimes shows up in the story itself but what should you focus when you are writing story or exploring an idea?

I think formal critique of literature is pretty far afield from how people generally read books. When you read book reviews from reviewers, generally they're evaluating the book on how much they enjoyed it and how well it was written. In literary critique, there is more of an emphasis on uncovering and discussing themes and messages within the story. That's why when I read Jane Eyre for class we talked a lot about the contrast between Red/Fire and White/Ice, and how that imagery detailed a message to the reader. That's not the kind of discussion I've ever seen a book reviewer on goodreads or Amazon engage with in a new fiction release. It's too professorial. I think most reviewers these days focus on whether the book was interesting to them and whether they felt satisfied and engaged while reading it, and if not to describe why the book failed to capture their interest.

So what is a writer to do? My advice is to make a book interesting on the surface, especially if you are writing a commercial novel. If you have themes you want to bring to light within the work, feel free to do so but know that many readers will miss them. You can't expect everyone to be as detail-oriented about your work as you are. While this advice may sound vapid, in the end it's history that decides whether a book's themes are worth discussing, and you might be dead by then. So better to write an interesting book that can appeal to many different readers and hope to make it big while you're alive.

That is good advice. Literary Criticism requires a specific language that you need to learn in order to critique a story? I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. I should just focus on writing on good story that most can read rather than just focus on themes however that doesn't necessary mean that I should disregard it altogether.

Themes and deeper meanings, in my experience as a writer, are things that tend to just happen all by themselves. I might be in the midst of building a plot or cast or some other part of my writing project, and then it'll suddenly dawn on me that I'm treating this one thing as a symbol for something else, or that the life cycle of this one fantasy species in my setting is essentially a motif for something from my own life. I decide if that's a symbol or theme I want to nurture, that doesn't detract from or conflict with my main plot- if it is something I want, I'll make a mental note to work it in and acknowledge it where appropriate; if not, I'll de-emphasize it in what I've already written and carry on as normal.

I would never set out to write a story thinking "it's going to have this theme" and then build the plot and characters around it. In this day and age, if you're going to write it a story, make it something that people will want to read first, and focus on themes and subtextual stuff only once you have a reasonably good idea of your 'surface' aspects.

If you write something that's absolute shit to read, nobody's going to care about its themes.

I personally find they can be interconnected. If I read a story and find a theme is "feminism", for example, I start picking up on all the details linking the story to "feminism". I enjoy the story because it pays attention to its theme of "feminism".

Plots are often based on themes as well. Let's say the plot is about a lady who fights sexism (and lots of enemies) to become the world's greatest warrior. The underlying theme of "feminism" would be core to the plot, without which the plot loses much of its meaning.