The etymology of motif takes us to the late Latin word motīvus , which refers to that which is linked to movement . For this reason, the first meaning of the term mentioned by the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ) in its dictionary refers to what has the power to move.
The most common use of the concept is linked to the origin, root or reason of something . A motive, in this framework, is what causes an action . For example: “The reason for the coach's resignation was his fight with the club president,” “There is no reason for you to be angry,” “For various reasons, I chose to buy a bicycle instead of a motorcycle.”
Suppose a business owner watches an employee steal money from an office. Given this situation, he fires him immediately, in addition to reporting him to the police. It can be said that the reason for dismissal is the crime that the worker committed.
Take the case of a motorist who suffers a heart attack while driving and ends up crashing into a tree. The reason for the crash, therefore, is the driver's sudden health problem. Furthermore, the reasons that led this individual to suffer a heart attack can be investigated.
This shows us that reasons can be “nested”, so to speak, and become an impossible chain to break that leads us to the event that indirectly started the current situation. For example, the reason why the driver has suffered a myocardial infarction may be a poor diet, with an excess of saturated fats that have accumulated on the walls of his coronary arteries, making it difficult to supply blood to the heart.
Likewise, if we continue investigating to find the reason why this man ate so poorly, we may discover that he did not have time to dedicate himself to cooking, and that is why he ate low- quality products that he bought prepared. There could also be a reason for this, such as being forced to work double shifts due to lack of money, and so on.
In the field of art , we speak of motif to refer to the theme or main characteristic of a work. A literary motif , continuing along this line, is an idea or an element that appears over and over again throughout a plot or even in different pieces. Platonic love can be the motif of a novel, to mention one possibility; It can also be true for a mother to ask a deity to protect her children, regardless of which deity it is in each story.
The motif can be made up of several symbols that are related to said repeating element. It is worth mentioning that many works can rely on the same motif and be completely different. It is also true that throughout the history of literature the motifs have evolved; For this reason, sometimes it is enough to study its characteristics in a given book to estimate the era in which it was written.
The word motive is also a conjugation of the verb motivate ; specifically, it corresponds to the first person of the present tense of the indicative mood ("I reason"). The dictionary defines this action as "giving someone a cause to do or feel something", "stimulating a person or arousing his interest " or "influencing another individual to act in a certain way."
In this case, we can find the term in sentences like the following: "Whenever I can, I encourage my students to read a lot, beyond the books indicated by the school."