leitmotif

He writes in a wry, amicable style, skillfully layering on his chosen leitmotifs—the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D.

Scorsese’s faith, and his battles with it, provide something of a leitmotif of the series — is he a saint or a sinner?

The book is crowded with characters, but “Sunshine Charlie” Mitchell, the head of National City Bank of New York, provides a sort of leitmotif.

The Argentine author, whose writing habitually draws on the uncanny, here delivers a blend of superstition, dread and a leitmotif of mental instability in a register of acute psychological realism.

Its leitmotif is push and pull: unsettling, bruising, often brutal, yet ultimately life-affirming.