Pretend that you open up the message from the bottle you found at the beach. After unrolling the paper, you find that it's written in code. Is this your million dollar chance or your ticket to winning your school's cookie bake-off? To find out, you have to figure out what the code means.
In the same way, when you read a story, you have to figure out what message the author is trying to get across by de-coding the story. Let's look at some easy ways to do this.
Characters
You can find the message of the story by looking at what its characters do, say, or think. What happens to the characters and their reactions often show what the author wants to teach you.
For example, in the story Little Red Riding Hood, Red's mother tells her to stay on the path to her grandmother's house, but she is easily distracted off the path by the wolf. This allows him to run to grandma's house before Red. Additionally, the wolf was a stranger to Red, but she still told him where her grandmother lived. Without Red making those two mistakes, the wolf would have never been able to cause the trouble he did.
Looking at what happened as a result of what Little Red said and did helps you see two themes in the story:
- Listen to your parents
- Don't talk to strangers
Also, you should probably turn and run the second your grandma starts looking like a wolf!
Repetition
The message of the story can also sometimes be found in what is repeated by the author. A particular phrase or action that is mentioned over and over is often pointing you to the theme of the story.
In the story The Boy Who Cried Wolf, the main character is a boy who is watching over sheep. He's bored, so he cries out that there is a wolf attacking the sheep. The townspeople come running and find no sheep. He continues to cry 'wolf' over and over again until the townspeople have had enough of his mischief. Finally, when a real wolf comes, the townspeople don't believe him.
The repeated action of the boy crying 'wolf' focuses the reader's attention on the theme, or message, that you shouldn't lie or people won't believe you when it's important.
Meanwhile, what's up with all these evil wolves? Where have all the good wolves gone?
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