Devices in Action
“The classroom buzzed like a hive of restless bees.”
What is a simile?
This concept refers to how a text reflects the values, beliefs, or practices of a particular time, place, or community.
What is Culture?
“Isolation.” Is this a theme or a topic?
What is a topic?
Symbolism
What is an authorial choice?
Name one authorial choice a writer could use to develop a theme about isolation in a gothic story.
e.g., imagery, symbolism, or syntax?
“Time itself seemed to hold its breath.”
What is personification?
This concept refers to how meaning is produced, received, and negotiated between writer, text, and reader.
What is Communication?
“Grief can distort a person's sense of time.” Theme or topic?
What is a theme?
Perspective
What is an IB Concept?
Which IB concept pairs most naturally with a story about a character hiding their true self from society?
What is Identity (or Representation)?
“He'd told her a million times to lock the door.”
What is hyperbole?
This concept explores how a text portrays selfhood — how a character or writer constructs and expresses who they are.
What is Identity?
Turn this topic into one arguable theme statement: “power.”
e.g., ‘Power corrupts even those with the best intentions’?
“Suffering often isolates people from the very community that could help them heal.”
What is a theme?
The topic is “art vs. commerce.” Write one possible theme statement using it.
What is any arguable claim connecting art and commerce?
A cracked mirror appears in the first scene of a story, and by the end the protagonist's family has fallen apart.
What is symbolism?
This concept examines how something like a character, a society, a genre changes over the course of a text.
What is Transformation?
What's missing from this attempted theme: “This story is about family”?
What is it only restates the topic?
Irony
What is an authorial choice?
Explain, in one sentence, the difference between an IB Concept and a theme.
What is: a concept is a broad lens for studying texts (like Identity), while a theme is this specific text's arguable claim within that lens?
Short, choppy sentences during a chase scene, then one long, winding sentence during a quiet reflective moment.
What is syntax?
This concept considers how a text constructs a version of reality, and whose reality gets left out.
What is Representation?
True or False: a strong theme should be specific to this text, not a generic life lesson that could apply to any story.
What is True
A student writes: “Kafka explores Identity by showing how the hunger artist's sense of self depends entirely on being watched.” Name the two categories both present in this sentence.
What are an IB Concept (Identity) and a theme (the claim about dependency on being watched)?
Explain why “irony” alone can never be a theme.
What is: a device is a technique, not an arguable claim. The theme is what the irony reveals or argues, not the device itself?