Hi, aspiring writers! Welcome to my first blog, Scheme’n’Theme.
As far as introductions go, my name is Kayla David. I’m a senior at Grand Canyon University, studying to earn a major in English with an emphasis in professional writing. Currently, I’m still deciding on which path I want to take, though GCU provides many excellent opportunities to help me choose.
Now, moving on from me, I do want to talk more about my blog.
This blog is a project I undertook for my multicultural literature class. Each of the blog posts represent an individual assignment I did throughout the semester. I have to say I enjoyed relating what I learned in class to these blog posts, and the entire experience was quite an adventure on its own, especially since it’s my first real time blogging anything.
Like the title of the class suggests, I learned a lot about multicultural literature. We did a ton of reading throughout the semester and explored more in-depth about the universal themes found in each of the stories we read. While some stories were less my cup of tea, I still enjoyed the discussions we had on the stories, their writers, and the underlying themes of each.
Our discussions allowed us to dive deeper into the stories in order to better understand how the writers incorporated different elements in order to not only write a theme, but to write one that speaks to people on a more personal level throughout the world. These discussions also helped put into perspective why each author incorporated these particular themes into their stories, or why they used those specific elements in order to write those themes.
The further along we got in the semester, the more I came to understand how literature is globalized. As I see it, the term global relates to literature because of how literature relates to people on a more intimate level. Literature speaks to us on a deeper level.
That is why literature extends past national boundaries and finds its way into foreign nations to make a mark on their cultures as well. We are connected to each other through these words and through these same themes that potentially define different fundamental aspects of ourselves.
20th-century literature, in particular, blurs national boundaries. As technology developed, stories written in the 20th-century could be accessed across the globe over the Internet. Translations of these books also found their way online. People no longer needed to understand another’s language in order to read their literature, and people no longer needed to hunt down copies translated in their language in order to read as well.
More than that, though, people didn’t really need to know the language in order to understand the story, because 20th-century literature opened up a way in which those boundaries fell away. Theme became a universal language instead.
Theme shows us that people overcome culture, such as race or values, to learn that people outside one’s own culture share similar experiences, too. Theme shows us that people are people. No matter what kind of situation they are in, or what issue they are dealing with, we all experience the same emotions in some shape or form.
Theme in the 20th-century literature does more than that, too. Literature from this time period portrays struggles with cultural identity as well.
Albert Camus’ “The Guest” is only one example of this struggle. Daru, the main character, is someone who struggles with cultural identity. Although someone who is born in Algeria and feels exhiled anywhere else, he lives in a French colony, which underlines the issues he struggles with as he is expected to obey an order from the French government despite not considering himself French.
Like the example above demonstrates, these reasons are why 20th-century literature blurs national boundaries and literature takes on a global meaning, because of its universality.
That’s why I decided to name my blog Scheme’n’Theme. I wanted to be able to relate more of how these different themes are reflected in pop culture, too. This way aspiring writers are challenged to consider more of how their writing portrays similar themes as well and why. In other words, we “scheme” in order to “theme.”
Scheme'n'Theme 