All 17 Uses of
theme
in
Atlas Shrugged
- THE THEME "Who is John Galt?"
Chpt 1.1 *theme = recurring idea
- She recognized the style of the theme; it was a clear, complex melody-at a time when no one wrote melody any longer…… She sat looking up at the ceiling of the car, but she did not see it and she had forgotten where she was.†
Chpt 1.1
- She did not know whether she was hearing a full symphony orchestra or only the theme; perhaps she was hearing the orchestration in her own mind.†
Chpt 1.1
- She thought dimly that there had been premonitory echoes of this theme in all of Richard Halley's work, through all the years of his long struggle, to the day, in his middle-age, when fame struck him suddenly and knocked him out.†
Chpt 1.1
- He was whistling the theme of the symphony.†
Chpt 1.1
- "It sounded like a Halley theme," she said.†
Chpt 1.1
- It was a few moments before she realized that she was whistling a piece of music-and that it was the theme of Halley's Fifth Concerto.†
Chpt 1.1
- The face was like his words-as if the line of a single theme ran from the steady glance of the eyes, through the gaunt muscles of the cheeks, to the faintly scornful, downward curve of the mouth-the line of a ruthless asceticism.†
Chpt 1.7
- She heard the rising, accelerating sound of the wheels-and some theme of music, heard to the rhythm of wheels, kept tugging at her mind, growing louder-it burst suddenly within the cab, but she knew that it was only in her mind; the Fifth Concerto by Richard Halley-she thought: did he write it for this? had he known a feeling such as this? they were going faster, they had left the ground, she thought, flung off by the mountains as by a springboard, they were now sailing through…†
Chpt 1.8
- Do you realize what theme you chose to treat and in what manner?†
Chpt 2.1
- …was not the face she had seen in the courtroom, it was not the face she had known for years as a countenance of unchanging, unfeeling rigidity-it was a face which a young man of twenty should hope for, but could not achieve, a face from which every sign of strain had been wiped out, so that the lined cheeks, the creased forehead, the graying hair-like elements rearranged by a new theme-were made to form a composition of hope, eagerness and guiltless serenity: the theme was deliverance.†
Chpt 2.3
- …was not the face she had seen in the courtroom, it was not the face she had known for years as a countenance of unchanging, unfeeling rigidity-it was a face which a young man of twenty should hope for, but could not achieve, a face from which every sign of strain had been wiped out, so that the lined cheeks, the creased forehead, the graying hair-like elements rearranged by a new theme-were made to form a composition of hope, eagerness and guiltless serenity: the theme was deliverance.†
Chpt 2.3
- She heard a piece of music beating in her mind, one she seldom liked to recall: not Halley's Fifth Concerto, but his Fourth, the cry of a tortured struggle, with the chords of its theme breaking through, like a distant vision to be reached.†
Chpt 2.10
- In the moment when she knew what experience had once made her want to surrender to the immediate present-it had been the night in a dusty coach of the Comet, when she had heard the. theme of Halley's Fifth Concerto for the first time-she knew that she was hearing it now, hearing it rise from the keyboard of a piano, in the clear, sharp chords of someone's powerful, confident touch.†
Chpt 3.1
- It was an experience she had not known since childhood —the experience of being held for three hours by a play that told a story she had not seen before, in lines she had not heard, uttering a theme that had not been picked from the hand-me-downs of the centuries.†
Chpt 3.2
- His conversation kept returning to a single theme, in the manner of a father who has found a listener interested in his most cherished subject: "You should have seen them, when they were in college, Miss Taggart.†
Chpt 3.2
- In the audience booth, James Taggart and Lillian Rearden sat frozen, like animals paralyzed by the headlight of a train rushing down upon them; they were the only ones present who knew the connection between the words they were hearing and the theme of the broadcast; it was too late for them to move; they dared not assume the responsibility of a movement or of whatever was to follow.†
Chpt 3.3
Definition:
-
(theme as in: theme of the novel) a basic idea that underlies what is being said or done -- especially in a literary or artistic work