THEMES
Before reading the novel, it is helpful to have students think about and discuss
some of the themes they will encounter.
THEME #1: FAMILY HISTORY AND FAMILY RELATIONSHIPS OR
SIBLING RIVALRY:
1. Wuthering Heights is the history of two families and how an outsider tries to
reconstruct that history. In order to begin to
understand this theme in the novel, think about your own family history.
a. Make a brief genealogical chart of three generations of your family:
grandparents, parents, children.
b. Make a list of important details of about your family to include in a history.
c. Discuss: What did you leave out of your history? Why? What kind of
information is difficult to explain to an
outsider?
2. Much of the conflict in the novel arises from the struggle of the three Earnshaw
children for their father’s love. Think
about sibling rivalry in literature and in your own experience.
a. Recall or tell the story of King Lear or the fairy tales, “Beauty and the Beast” or
“Cinderella.” Why do the sisters in
the stories quarrel? How does one’s place in a family affect behavior in positive
and negative ways?
b. Read one of the young adult novels suggested in the bibliography. How do
family embers in the novel relate to each other?
THEME #2: ROMANTIC OR ILL-FATED LOVE:
Wuthering Heights is about the love between Catherine and Heathcliff. Students
can better evaluate this relationship if
they consider their own notions of love first.
a. Examine modern day depictions of love by looking at magazine articles, music,
movies, soap operas, or popular
literature. Bring in the lyrics to a love song or several magazine articles about
“love.” Recall the plot of a film about
love. As a class distinguish between the various types of love depicted in modern
culture; e.g. romantic, married,
platonic, fulfilled and unfulfilled, and sensual love. List the characteristics of each
type of love. Is there a type of love
which is least often depicted in modern culture? What is it? Why?
b. What does it mean when lovers say they are one--no longer two separate
persons? What happens when someone
becomes “love sick”?
c. Read one of the young adult novels suggested in the bibliography. Examine how
it depicts the theme of romantic or
ill-fated love.
d. Here are some lines from the novel. Predict the speaker’s character and the
speaker’s attitudes about love:
1) “He shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he’s handsome...but
because he’s more myself than
I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” (Catherine)
2) “If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in
eighty years as I could in a day.”
(Heathcliff )
THEME #3: REVENGE:
Much of the action of the novel recounts Heathcliff ’s revenge against the
Earnshaws and Lintons and raises questions
about the effects of revenge.
1. Review the stories of novels, plays or films that have a revenge theme; such as
Hamlet, Moby Dick, The Count of Monte
Cristo, and Medea or films such as Amadeus, Fatal Attraction, and Cape Fear.
Read a short story or parable in which a
character seeks revenge (for example, the section on feuds in Twain’s Huckleberry
Finn or Poe’s “The Cask of
Amontillado.”) As a class, discuss: Is revenge ever justified? What is the effect of
revenge on the person who carries it out?
How can a wronged person secure justice?
A Teacher’s Guide to the Signet Classic Edition of George Orwell’s 1984 9
2. Find a newspaper story about a crime committed with a motive of revenge.
Speculate about what the wronged person was
seeking. How will this person be affected if they get revenge? Will they be
changed, and how? Will the person be satisfied?
3. Freely write about an act of revenge that you have witnessed or experienced.
Speculate about he questions asked in #2.
THEME #4: NATURE VERSUS CIVILIZATION:
There is a distinction in the novel between the behavior of the Earnshaws which is
driven by elemental or natural forces
and the actions of the Lintons which are mannered, proper, and socialized. You can
get students to begin thinking about
this theme by asking them to define what it means to be natural versus civilized
and how definitions of each of these states
are culturally determined.
1. Think about the “back to nature” idea in our culture. Why do people like to get
away to the wilderness? What do they
hope to recapture in themselves when they immerse themselves in the natural
world? What do we lose by living civilized
lives? What do we gain?
2. Make a collage which contrasts the natural and civilized world. Freely write or
discuss: what differences exist between the
two worlds?
3. Read one of the young adult novels listed in the bibliography. Discuss how it
addresses the them of nature vs. civilization.
