TOPIC: Theme and Tone
Theme
When we read and discuss poetry, we often begin with the question, what is it about? And our first short-hand answer may be, this poem is about love or this poem is about death. In this case, we are stating the topic or subject of the poem. The poem's subject, however, is a broad category that doesn't really get to the specifics of that particular poem. Each poem takes a particular approach to or attitude about the subject. In this way, each poem has a specific message to communicate. When we look at what the poem says about its subject, we are looking at theme. For example, the subject of "We Real Cool" is youth. When we try to determine what the poem is saying about youth, we may decide that the theme is: young people can be deluded to the point of self-destruction. This is what this poem is saying about youth. A different poem about youth might praise the beauty of innocence. Even though these two poems have the same topic, they have very different themes.
Tone
An important element in determining theme is examining the tone. If the theme is what the poem says about its topic, tone illustrates how a poem says it. In our everyday lives, one of the first things we notice in listening to any voice is the tone. Is the tone happy? Sorrowful? Bored? Angry? An important part of tone, as you can see, is emotion. Words have specific meanings, but a speaker's tone--the emotion behind those words--can drastically alter the meaning of any word or sentence. Look at this short, simple sentence: "Get over here." What is the meaning of this sentence if the person saying it has an angry tone? What is the meaning of this sentence of the person saying it has a happy, excited tone? Obviously, the same exact words can have a very different meaning depending on the tone. What would happen if you can't figure out the tone or get it wrong, maybe thinking the tone is happy when the tone is actually angry? That can lead to a very awkward situation. If we misread the tone of a poem, we might end up with similarly negative results. Of course, in a poem we are not hearing an actual voice as we do in real life. We encounter a poem as words on the page, and we therefore need to pay careful attention to those words, their meanings, their emotional coloring, their sounds and rhythms.
To summarize, when we look at tone, we look at the speaker's attitude toward the subject. In determining the attitude, we explore the emotional resonance of the words.