Both Uses of

theme

in

The Shining

After his classes he went over to Al Shockley's-she hated Al Shockley worse than she had ever hated anyone-and when he came home she would swear she smelled scotch or gin on his breath, but he would talk lucidly to her before supper, drink coffee, play with Danny after supper, sharing a Coke with him, read him a bedtime story, then sit and correct themes with cup after cup of black coffee by his hand, and she would have to admit to herself that she had been wrong.†
Chpt 1 *

He had vague memories: listening to a man who had once been a successful radio comic and then a variety star in TV, infant days telling a very long and very hilarious joke about incest between Siamese twins; seeing the woman in the harem pants and the sequined bra do a slow and sinuous striptease to some bumping-andgrinding music from the jukebox (it seemed it had been David Rose's theme music from The Stripper); crossing the lobby as one of three, the other two men in evening dress that predated the twenties, all of them singing about the stiff patch on Rosie O'Grady's knickers.†
Chpt 5

Definitions:

(1) (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
(2) (theme as in: musical theme)
the initial or primary melody of a musical composition

or

(as in "theme song") music that is most repeated in a film, television series, or other theatrical production
(3) (theme as in: wrote a 2-page theme on my summer)
an essay written by a student

(This sense of theme is much rarer in recent decades than in the past.)
(4) (meaning too rare to warrant focus)