Write an essay discussing the theme of the short story. Your idea of the storys theme is solely from your own analysis. You must prove what you think the theme of the story is by doing a close reading of the work. What is the point of the story? Northrop Frye has some good advice about how to look at literature:
We have to look at the figures of speech a writer uses, his images and symbols, to realize that underneath all the complexity of human life that uneasy stare at an alien nature is still haunting us, and the problem of surmounting it still with us. Above all, we have to look at the total design of a writers work, the title he gives to it, and his main theme, which means his point in writing it, to understand that literature is still doing the same job that mythology did earlier, but filling in its huge cloudy shapes with sharper lights and deeper shadows. Northrop Frye The Educated Imagination