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Common Core ELAGrades 11–12Reading: Literature

RL.11-12.2: Trace Themes That Build on Each Other

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.2 · Cluster: Key Ideas and Details.

All 41 Grades 11–12 ELA Standards

The Official Wording

Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.

Common Core State Standards, Grades 11-12, Reading: Literature · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What RL.11-12.2 Means in Plain English

Juniors and seniors trace two or more themes and show how they feed each other into a richer story, then summarize it without taking sides. An old man mapping his flooded village by a lamp the dam powers keeps memory and progress locked together.

In grades 9 and 10 (RL.9-10.2) students traced one theme through the details that shape it. Grades 11 and 12 add a second theme and how the two interact. This is the last band of the line, with no later code: the college and career readiness level.

RL.11-12.2 I Can Statements

  • I can identify two or more themes in a story or play.
  • I can explain where two themes meet and how they change each other.
  • I can summarize a text objectively, without judging its characters.

RL.11-12.2 Worked Example

An old man maps the village a dam drowned, by a lamp his granddaughter wired with power from that same dam.

Read the Story
Every evening Emory unrolled the map he was drawing of the village the dam had put under forty feet of water: the forge, the schoolhouse, the steeple, the lane where he had kissed his wife.He drew by the light of a brass reading lamp. His granddaughter Lise had wired it for him the summer she started at the power company.“You know where that current comes from,” he said once, not unkindly. “I know,” she said, and changed the bulb.In the dry year the lake fell, and the steeple rose out of the water like a raised hand. Emory asked Lise to drive him to the shore, and on the cracked mud he let her take his arm.
A short passage written for this page.
Question: Name two themes the story develops and explain how they interact. Then summarize the passage objectively.
Not Yet“The theme is that progress is bad. The power company destroyed Emory’s village, and he is right to be bitter about it.”It finds one theme, states it as a slogan and takes Emory’s side. The summary turns into an opinion, and the granddaughter drops out of the story entirely.
Meets the Standard“One theme is that memory keeps a place that progress erased: Emory maps even ‘the lane where he had kissed his wife.’ A second is that progress brings comfort along with loss, since he draws ‘by the light of a brass reading lamp’ powered by the same dam. The two collide in one exchange, ‘You know where that current comes from,’ and a third theme grows out of the collision: love that outlasts the disagreement. Lise answers by changing the bulb, and at the shore he lets her take his arm. Summary: an old man maps his flooded village by a lamp his granddaughter, a power company worker, installed. When the water drops and the steeple reappears, she takes him to see it.”It names two themes with evidence, finds the exact exchange where they meet and shows a third growing out of them, then gives a summary both characters would accept.
Question Stems to Use
What two different ideas does this story keep returning to?Where do the two themes meet in a single moment?Does one theme complicate or soften the other?What does the ending add that neither theme says alone?Could both characters accept your summary as fair?

Common Mistakes with RL.11-12.2

One theme, stated as a slogan

“The theme is that progress is bad.”

Try this: Have students write each theme as a full sentence with a tension in it, then look for a second theme the first one leaves out.

Two themes that never meet

A paragraph on memory, a paragraph on progress, and nothing connecting them

Try this: Ask for the single moment where both themes are present at once, and build the analysis outward from that moment.

A summary that takes sides

“The greedy power company drowned the village.”

Try this: Have students revise the summary until both Emory and Lise would sign it, cutting every adjective that passes judgment.

Where RL.11-12.2 Fits

Comes BeforeRL.9-10.2Trace one theme from where it emerges through the details that shape it.
AlongsideRI.11-12.2Trace two or more central ideas in nonfiction and how they build on each other.RL.11-12.3Analyze how the author’s choices about setting and character carry the themes.
Comes NextW.11-12.9Write a literary analysis that follows interacting themes with evidence.SL.11-12.1Discuss which theme dominates, building on and challenging classmates’ readings.

Practice RL.11-12.2

Quick Check

  1. What is Emory drawing?
  2. Why does the reading lamp matter?
  3. What happens when the lake falls?

RL.11-12.2: Other Names

RL.11-12.2CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.2

Common Core State Standards © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved. Official wording from the Common Core State Standards PDFs at corestandards.org, last checked October 14, 2026. The explanation, I can statements, example, mistakes and practice on this page are EMStudio’s own, written beside the official wording. They are not part of the standard.