Desire to know
The major theme in the story "Matisse’’ is the innate desire everyone has to know more. This knowledge is most commonly related to the desire to find more about a person’s life and everything that takes place in that person's life. This desire is presented in the story as being destructive because it robs a person of their privacy and the possibility of standing up for themselves and present themselves as they want to, not as others present them to be. This desire creates eventually problems for many, as some end up creating a fictionalized person in their own head, someone which had nothing to do with reality.
Love and its true nature
In "Christian Bérard’’, the main theme analyzed focuses on the true nature of love and the way in which love is at the same time extremely powerful and extremely fragile. First, the narrator compares love with a lightning, to show its power and also just how at times, it can come out of nowhere and take every person by surprise. Because of this comparison, love is associate with danger as well, the narrator showing just how a person who falls in love has to think about the possibility of getting hurt at one point or another. Then, at the end of the poem, love is compared with glass, to show just how fragile it is and how one person has to keep in mind the possibility of love breaking at any moment in time. This comparison also transmits once more the possibility of getting hurt, as broken glass can easily cause injuries. Still, despite the dangers, the narrator maintains the idea that love is something beautiful, uplifting even which enriches a person’s life and can make life much more beautiful.
Men and women
The main theme in "Idem the Same: A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson’’ is presenting the difference between men and women, both described in the first and second part of the story. The narrator choses to analyze the men first, describing them as hunters, dressed in thick and protective clothing and carrying firearms and knives with them. this description makes men to be both the providers and inclined towards violence. This violence is not directed at anything at anyone but it still mentioned, almost in a threatening manner. Women are the complete opposite, dressed in really thin clothes and carrying big parcels under their arms. The cloths can be seen here as represent the weaker nature of women while the parcels are used to represent their natural nurturing tendencies. The men and the women described here are not in opposition with one another but rather work together to reach a common goal. This is important to analyze because the narrator thus transmits the idea that men and women, while they are different, they need one another in order to survive and to have a happy and fulfilling life.
