Exploring The 10 Most Common Themes in Literature

Most readers can tell you whether they liked a book. Far fewer can tell you why it stuck with them for years. The answer is almost always theme.

Themes in literature are the invisible architecture holding a story together. They’re why The Hunger Games and 1984 feel like the same story in different clothes, why To Kill a Mockingbird is still assigned in schools decades after publication, and why certain books feel like they were written specifically for you.

As an author, understanding literary themes isn’t just an academic exercise. It’s how you write books that connect. And connection is what turns readers into lifelong fans.

Today, we’ll be exploring the most popular and enduring themes in literature.

TL;DR: Themes in literature are the central ideas and messages that give a story its deeper meaning – think love, death, power, and rebellion. The 10 most common themes in literature are love, coming of age, death, faith, power, rebellion, women’s roles in society, hubris, man vs. nature, and revenge. Great books rarely use just one; they layer themes to create stories that resonate long after the final page.

What are themes in literature? A definition

Themes in literature are the central ideas or messages that a story explores beneath its plot. It’s the “what it’s really about” beneath the surface of what happens.

A theme is not a plot point. Plot is what happens: Harry defeats Voldemort. Theme is what it means: good requires sacrifice, and identity is defined by choices rather than destiny.

Themes are what give fiction and nonfiction their staying power. They’re the reason a reader finishes a book and immediately needs to talk to someone about it.

Theme vs. plot vs. setting: what’s the difference?

These three elements are often confused. Here’s the clearest way to separate them:

Themes operate beneath the story. Plot moves characters forward. Theme gives the journey meaning.

The 10 most common themes in literature

As you’ll see, some themes in literature may also dictate their genres, but that’s not always the case. It’s possible to address love when writing a memoir and to have a classic good vs. evil conflict in an otherwise feel-good comedy.

In fact, most great books mix literary themes. And understanding the most iconic themes as an author will help you intentionally resonate with your audience. So, let’s get into it.

1. Love

Ah, love. Perhaps the most universal and enduring theme to appear in literature throughout the ages.

While people love reading and writing romance novels, this one goes beyond romantic love (requited, tragic, or otherwise). A book with love as a theme could include familial love, friendship, and self-love. These stories often revolve around the complexities, joys, and challenges of human relationships (though fantasy genres may take you beyond human love!).

Examples across genres:

• Pride and Prejudice — romantic love complicated by social expectation
• The Kite Runner — friendship, guilt, and redemptive love
• A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks — love and loss
• Harry Potter — maternal love as the most powerful force in the story

Love works in nearly every genre: romance, literary fiction, YA, thriller, and even horror. It’s versatile because humans experience it in every context of their lives.

2. Coming of age

There’s a reason that young adult fiction is one of the top-selling book genres – across all ages of people.

For younger readers, a story about that life-altering transition from childhood to adulthood may make them feel less alone. For adult readers, it stokes a sense of nostalgia. Coming-of-age themes in literature often include a healthy dose of self-discovery, lessons about maturity, and difficult challenges of growing up.

Examples:

• To Kill a Mockingbird — Scout’s moral awakening through injustice
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower — adolescent identity and trauma
• Jane Eyre — a woman defining herself against social pressure
• Harry Potter — the whole series tracks a boy becoming a man through loss and choice

Young adult fiction is one of the top-selling book genres precisely because coming-of-age themes cross demographic lines. Adults buy and read YA in enormous numbers.

3. Death

We all have very different experiences and feelings about death. And you can find this literary theme in everything from romance – such as Nicholas Sparks’ A Walk To Remember – and young adult – They Both Die At The End – to horror and inspirational nonfiction.

The relationship between life, death, and loss is one we must all navigate at some point in our lives, and leads to an impactful, thought-provoking read. 

Examples across genres:

• They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera — YA, two strangers given one final day
• A Walk to Remember — love and terminal illness
• The Book Thief — narrated by Death itself during WWII
• Pet Sematary by Stephen King — what we’ll sacrifice to cheat death

Death appears in romance, horror, literary fiction, and inspirational nonfiction. It works across all of them because loss is not genre-specific.

4. Faith

You don’t have to write a book about Christianity or another religion to address this time-tested literary theme in your book. Faith comes in many forms and can include a relationship between humans and deities, between two characters, and even faith in oneself. When employing this one, many authors often include moments of doubt.

This is one of those themes in literature that can be triggering, humbling, life-altering, and more. It evokes a range of emotions as readers of all backgrounds have likely struggled with having or losing faith in some aspect of life. Whether the faith being explored is religious in nature or about humanity in general, this literary theme is universal: Do I trust the friend who hurt me or doubt their motives? Is there a God? Do I choose faith or doubt in ____ situation? 

Examples:

• Silence by Shusaku Endo — a priest’s faith tested by persecution
• The Shack by William P. Young — grief, God, and the limits of understanding
• Life of Pi — which story do we choose to believe, and why?

Faith-driven plots often turn on moments of doubt, which is what gives them dramatic tension. The most interesting characters aren’t the ones who never waver. They’re the ones who almost don’t make it through.

5. Power

The fight for power, the story of a hero’s (or villain’s) rise to power, and the classic battle between good and evil – these are all examples of power dynamics and themes in literature.

As we mentioned, there are often multiple literary themes applied or explored in a single book. So it’s worth noting here that most commentaries or discussions of power often go hand-in-hand with oppression. They also thrust the reader into questions of morality, ethics, and the plethora of character motivations that arise in the face of moral dilemmas.

In The Hunger Games, President Snow uses his power to condemn the weak. In Jason Bourne, the power dynamic is a struggle between opposing characters and spurs readers to read to the last page.

Examples:

• The Hunger Games — systemic power used to control and punish
• 1984 — state power and the destruction of individual identity
• Macbeth — ambition and the corruption that follows unchecked power
• Jason Bourne series — power as a struggle between competing forces

Power themes work across genres because the dynamics are familiar. Readers recognize the feeling of being powerless, and they root for characters who fight back.

6. Rebellion

This is another of the timeless themes in literature because it often stirs something deep within us.

Rebellion and revolution explores the defiance of societal norms, authority, personal beliefs, identity, or oppressive systems. Whether it’s characters leading an uprising against an oppressive government in a dystopian sci-fi, a teen rebelling against social expectations in a YA novel, or someone defying conventional wisdom to forge their own path in a memoir, we love to read about personal, political, familial, and societal rebellions.

As one of the more popular themes in books, it makes us want to root for the main character while touching on topics like courage, determination, and loneliness – all things we must overcome to pursue personal freedom.

Examples:

• The Hunger Games — Katniss as reluctant symbol of revolution
• Divergent — identity as an act of defiance
• The Handmaid’s Tale — resistance against patriarchal control
• Rebel Without a Cause — personal rebellion against conformity

Rebellion is especially prominent in dystopian literature, YA fiction, and political thrillers. It pairs naturally with themes of power and oppression.

7. Women’s roles in society

Whether you see this literary theme in Little Women or Pride and Prejudice or notice it in some of the best celebrity memoirs of today, women’s struggles and experiences are an important theme that unites and impacts everyone. Using this theme in literature can be controversial, thought-provoking, and triggering. But it doesn’t always need to be negative.

Writing female characters can include using stereotypical stock characters (IE: the damsel in distress, the hard-working career woman, etc), going deeper and writing about feminism, or backing into the theme in another way, such as by addressing women’s beauty standards.

Consider both the Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and the comparison of Elizabeth Bennet to her older “more beautiful” sister, Jane in Pride and Prejudice. The Evil Queen starts as the most beautiful but is later revealed as the villain. Elizabeth is said to be plain, but later, her character reveals her true beauty.

Examples:

• Pride and Prejudice — marriage as economic necessity for women
• Little Women — different women, different choices, all constrained by the same era
• The Handmaid’s Tale — women’s autonomy as a political battleground
• Daisy Jones and the Six — female artistry and the male gaze in rock music

Female character tropes (the damsel, the career woman, the villain who was once beautiful) are all expressions of this theme, whether authors use them deliberately or unconsciously.

8. Hubris

Hubris refers to excessive pride or self-confidence, particularly when a character believes they are above the laws of society or even the divine. The origin of the hubris theme dates back to Ancient Greek tragedies, where hubris was often a mortal’s defiance of the gods, leading to divine punishment.

In literature, hubris often leads to a character’s downfall, making it a central element in tragedy and myths.

An example of hubris is in the book Frankenstein, where Victor Frankenstein attempts to conquer death and “play God,” only to suffer the consequences of creating life irresponsibly.

Examples:

• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley — Victor Frankenstein “plays God” and cannot control what he creates
• Macbeth — ambition without moral limits leads to destruction
• The Great Gatsby — Gatsby’s belief that he can recapture the past
• Icarus (myth) — the original hubris story

Hubris is a reliable engine for tragedy. If you want to write a character whose downfall feels inevitable and deserved, this is the theme to reach for.

9. Man vs Nature

This theme explores humanity’s struggle against the natural world. Often, the protagonist is pitted against natural forces (such as the wilderness, the sea, animals, disease, or environmental disaster) and must survive or confront their insignificance. It often raises questions about human limits and resilience.

In Lord of the Flies, a group of boys stranded on an island must contend with both nature and their descent into savagery, blurring the line between human nature and the wild. In The Old Man and the Sea, an aging fisherman engages in an epic battle with a giant marlin, symbolizing pride, endurance, and man’s fight against nature’s dominance.

Examples:

• The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway — endurance, pride, and the limits of human will
• Lord of the Flies — civilization stripped away by isolation
• Into the Wild — idealism meets the brutal indifference of wilderness
• The Revenant — survival as its own kind of rebellion

This theme appears most frequently in literary fiction, adventure writing, and survival thrillers. It also shows up in memoir. Survival stories and nature writing draw on the same tension.

10. Revenge

When someone is wronger, the desire for revenge often follows. This theme explore the moral, emotional, and psychological costs of vengeance. Is revenge a path to justice, or a cycle of destruction? Characters driven by revenge must confront difficult questions of identity, morality, and self-destruction.

Perhaps the most enduring story of vengeance is The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. Edmond Dantès is wrongfully imprisoned and spends years plotting an elaborate revenge on those who betrayed him.

Examples:

• The Count of Monte Cristo — the definitive revenge plot, elaborately constructed over years
• Hamlet — revenge complicated by doubt, obligation, and inaction
• Gone Girl — domestic revenge, cold and surgical
• Kill Bill — revenge as genre exercise and character study

The best revenge narratives don’t just show the act. They show what it costs. Characters who get everything they wanted and find themselves empty are more interesting than ones who simply win.

Which themes in literature and your favorite books do you most resonate with? And which do you find you tend to use most in your storytelling as an author?

How themes in literature can differ from genre to genre

This list of different book genres you could write for as an author is about as long as the list of literary themes to employ. But, while there is always room to switch themes and plots from genre to genre, there is an underlying expectation that specific plots will lend to specific themes in literature. Similarly, different themes may lend to specific literary devices and vice versa.

You’ve likely opened a thriller and not been surprised when the protagonist is suddenly involved in a tense cat-and-mouse scenario. And you can expect the best fantasy romance novels to explore the theme of (probably steamy and potentially problematic) love.

But if you tend to gravitate toward light-hearted beach reads or cozy mystery novels, you might be surprised (and a little turned off) to find themes of oppression, survival, and gory death. 

With these examples in mind, let’s look a few more themes in literature from the lense of their respective genres.

The best themes in dystopian literature

If you read the bestselling The Hunger Games, Maze Runner, or Divergent series, you likely noticed that the themes in these books were vastly similar. Dystopian literary themes often focus on one or more of the following:

• Rebellion
• Oppression
• Good versus evil
• Family
• Survival

While these themes could definitely appear in romance books, they are typically associated with dystopia. 

The best themes in romance literature

As we mentioned above, romance books can cover a wide gamut. There are dark romances, stories about toxic relationships, tragic and unrequited love, and any number of romance tropes an author could employ.

Again, while individual novels may combine multiple themes, here are some of the popular literary themes found in romance novels:

• Passion
• Second chances
• Friends to lovers
• Betrayal
• Death
• Identity
• Abuse

The best themes in thriller literature

Ripe with edge-of-your-seat plot twists and insurmountable obstacles often include some common literary themes in this genre of books:

• Politics
• Morals
• Death
• Survival
• Adventure
• Love

Robert Ludlum, the original creator of the hero Jason Bourne, used many such themes.

In fact, the film adaptations include each of the themes listed above and more. While not every thriller needs to use these, they can help move the story along and keep the reader emotionally invested. If you read or write fiction, you’ve likely noticed these themes emerge as well.

Related: The Difference Between Horror and Thriller Genres

The best themes in YA literature

There’s nearly no literary theme YA authors haven’t addressed. But while the popularity of themes in YA literature can shift over time, several themes have consistently remained popular:

• Coming of age
• Self-discovery
• Friendship
• Love
• Identity
• Rebellion
• Mental health
• Sex
• Loss

That said, genre expectations are starting points, not rules. A cozy mystery with a revenge subplot. A romance with a genuine power-dynamics critique. A thriller built around grief. The most original books often use genre conventions and then import a theme that doesn’t typically live there.

Common mistakes authors make with literary themes

The biggest mistake is confusing subject with theme.

“Death” is a subject. “Grief forces us to confront what we actually valued” is a theme. The subject is what the book is about on the surface. The theme is what the book argues, reveals, or explores beneath it.

Three other mistakes to avoid:

1. Stating the theme explicitly — Characters shouldn’t announce the book’s message. If your protagonist delivers a speech that reads like a thesis statement, cut it. Show the theme through choices and consequences.
   
2. Using only one theme — Nearly every great book layers multiple themes. The Hunger Games is about rebellion AND survival AND identity AND love. Themes reinforce each other.
   
3. Forcing theme onto plot — Theme should emerge from characters making meaningful choices, not from plot events engineered to prove a point. Readers feel the difference.

How to use themes when planning your book

If you’re writing your first book, here’s the most practical approach:

1. Start with story, not theme. Write the characters and conflict first. Theme often clarifies itself through drafting.
   
2. Identify the theme in revision. Look at what your protagonist wants, what’s stopping them, and what they learn. That’s usually your theme.
   
3. Layer intentionally. Once you see the primary theme, ask what secondary themes are already present and lean into them.
   
4. Let your editor help with coherence. A developmental editor’s job is partly to identify theme and ensure the story supports it throughout.

Understanding literary themes is one thing. Applying them in a manuscript you’re proud of is another, and that’s exactly what the team at selfpublishing.com helps authors do.

Whether you’re working on a novel, memoir, or nonfiction book, the Become a Bestseller program gives you coaching, structure, and expert feedback to help your story land.

Frequently asked questions

What are themes in literature? Themes in literature are the central ideas or messages that a story explores beneath its surface events. They are not plot summaries — they are what the story means. Common themes include love, death, power, coming of age, and rebellion.

What is the most common theme in literature? Love is the most consistently recurring theme across all periods and genres of literature. It appears in ancient epics, Shakespeare, 19th century realism, and contemporary commercial fiction. Coming of age and death are close behind in frequency.

What is the difference between a theme and a subject? A subject is what a book is about on the surface (death, war, love). A theme is the argument or insight the book makes about that subject (“love requires sacrifice,” “war destroys the people it claims to protect”). Theme is subject + meaning.

Can a book have more than one theme? Most great books have multiple themes. To Kill a Mockingbird addresses coming of age, racial injustice, courage, and family simultaneously. Themes reinforce each other and give a story depth. A book with only one theme often feels thin.

How do you identify themes in a book? Look at what the protagonist wants and what prevents them from getting it. Look at the choices characters make under pressure and what those choices cost. The pattern of desire, obstacle, and consequence usually points directly to the theme.

What are themes in literature for students? For academic purposes, literary themes are the recurring ideas that give a work its meaning and invite analysis. Key themes studied in school include justice (To Kill a Mockingbird), ambition (Macbeth), identity (The Catcher in the Rye), and survival (Lord of the Flies).

How do themes in literature connect to the writing process? Authors don’t always know their theme before they start writing. Theme often emerges through drafting and becomes clearer in revision. Understanding common literary themes helps authors make intentional choices about what their story is trying to say and helps editors ensure the manuscript delivers on that promise. If you’re ready to take your book from concept to published, selfpublishing.com can help you get there.