The story is the thing itself. Greater than the sum of its parts. When a story works, theme arises interstitially like harmony, and you are convinced because of the story’s spiritual truth and internal logic.

“Theme” isn’t something you can break out and isolate, it’s a layer of meaning that depends on the whole. An attempted theme that fails to convince because of errors elsewhere is like a legal defense that fails on the facts.

“Oh my defense was great, I should have won—if only I had the right facts. Shut up about the facts of the case!”

My friend, you lost.

What these people see dimly is that some minor inconsistencies or logic errors can be forgiven. But not if they 1) affect the ‘argument’ of the story’s internal logic, and/or 2) build to a critical mass that the story no longer seems ‘bound’ to our own lives.

By bound to our lives, I mean along the specific lines the author chose to reflect reality. I’m not sure it would be possible to write a completely disembodied and unidentifiable story—although Samuel Beckett tried.