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151children still be warm and alive? Gritting their teeth in pain and happily whimpering as their numbed feet and fingers prickled to life? Or would they be frail blue human bubbles he%u2019d failed to rescue? Would his son and his daughter be among them? Dissolved to froth? He closed his eyes. Again, he was down there with the fish darting in and out, lakeweed clogging the children%u2019s mouths, each seat inhabited by a small, vanished life. And who was he? The driver or the one driven from existence by relentless snow? He reached%u2014Agnid pressed into his open hand a cup of snow she%u2019d melted. He looked at her. She was sturdy. The water was hot, steeped with a piece of boiled wool she%u2019d cut away from her coat. This was, she said, an old cure that her mother used for wind sickness, times when the mind could no longer bear the wind%u2019s moans and mumbles and a person started hearing human voices.He took the cup, drained it down. It tasted horrible, and he was cured.Or, rather, he was better. For the drive would leave its mark upon him in a way that someone who had not seen those children, blue and hollow under the lake, would never understand. That was why he wrote it down.202230Before we reread the story, let%u2019s pause here to capture your first impressions. A quick summary of the passage might read something like this:In %u201cThe Hollow Children,%u201d a bus driver transports students quite a distance through dangerous weather to make it safely to the school.Preparing to Write an Analysis of Theme in FictionNow that we%u2019ve confirmed our understanding of the story%u2019s events, we can consider a writing prompt designed to deepen our analysis:In Louise Erdrich%u2019s short story %u201cThe Hollow Children,%u201d Ivek, the protagonist, must navigate a blizzard to drive a bus full of children to school. After reading the story carefully, analyze how Ivek%u2019s experiences on the bus develop a theme of the story.Annotating Fiction for ThemeWith this prompt in mind, read the story a second time and try practicing the annotationskills we reviewed in the opening chapters of this book. If you have a copy of the story to write on, annotate it directly. If not, use sticky notes or take notes in a notebook.Remember, we%u2019re ultimately trying to discern how Erdrich conveys a theme. So, while you can mark anything of importance, it will likely be most useful to annotate Analysis of Theme in Fiction Writing WorkshopCopyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.