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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29550
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29550
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I don't think it is reasonable to call a setting thematic in itself. It should also be said that a theme is not a message. A theme is what you deal with in a story or an essay, not what conclusions you reach about it. You can have two different works on the same theme that reach very different conclusions about that theme.

The role of a setting is to create the ground on which the theme can be explored. If your theme is about war, then your setting might be a battlefield. If your theme is about love, your setting might be a wedding. Neither the battle not the wedding are a theme in themselves, they are simply the occasions on which the theme can be introduced and examined.

Reusing a quote from another answer, here is Erich Maria Remarque describing _All Quiet on the Western Front_:

> This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped (its) shells, were destroyed by the war.

That is as clear a statement of theme as you are likely to find anywhere. This theme necessarily requires a certain setting, but the setting is not in itself the theme. The theme is developed by the action of the characters placed in the setting.

Original score: 4