Beneath Writing's Surface

So often we think of writing only in terms of its surface meaning, its subject and theme and plot. But there is another layer to writing that really needs our awareness and deserves our attention. That is the underlying or implicit meaning of a work of literature. It's the message of the work, not its more obvious subject and theme. What is the writer saying beneath the words that readers need to pay attention to? As children, we were often asked what the moral of a story was, and we answered with simplicistic ditties such as: "The moral of the story is that goodness overcomes evil," or some such cliche. Even as children, as lovers of storytelling, we instinctively knew the difference between theme (the main idea or subject matter of a story) and moral (the lesson to be learned from the story). But as adult readers and writers, we seem to have forgotten, and we focus heavily on the surface characteristics of writing rather than the deeper instrinsic meaning of it. But it's this deeper layer where writing affects us the most. We may not always be able to articulate the deeper meaning of a work, but we can always sense it. We feel writing viscerally because it is able to connect with us on this level. Whether reading or writing, we should strive to be cognizant of the richness beneath the surface of what we read and write. It will make us more appreciative readers and certainly better writers. Because, as the old adage says, it's not what we say (on the surface) but how we say it (implicitly) that makes all the difference.