What is a Redemption Theme?
A redemption theme is a story paradigm for fiction that centers around a fundamental moral arc within the main character from bad to good. At the start of the story the character will be less than whole and deeply flawed in a way that reverberates throughout the character’s choices and actions. By the end of the story the character will have undergone a “trial by fire” that results in a Phoenix experience of rising from the ashes, a totally new, more powerful and more whole person. One of the best examples of a redemption theme is Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, based on the book, Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally. The 1993 biographical film is based on Oskar Schindler, a Nazi businessman who used Jewish slave labor during WWII to make products for the German military. Schindler starts out an opportunistic man with little concern for the genocide occurring around him, but is eventually transformed by the violence he sees. Schindler uses his factories to save the lives of over 100
