Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Monster Calls, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Death, Denial, and Acceptance
Storytelling
Isolation
Family and Growing Up
Summary
Analysis
Conor’s father drives Conor home after dinner. When Conor asks how long he’s staying, Conor’s father tells him that he’s only there for a few days, as “Americans don’t get much holiday.” Conor is upset that he’s there for so little time, asking why he came at all. Conor’s father says that Conor’s mother asked him to come.
The fact that Conor is so upset over his father being there only a few days emphasizes how desperate Conor is to have someone who can understand him and take care of him as a parental figure—but not just any adult or relative will do, as evidenced by the fact that Conor repeatedly rejects his grandmother’s attempts to fill that role. Instead, Conor longs for his parents to care for him, but neither of them can right now due to distance and illness. The fact that he wants his father to stay longer suggests that Conor longs for life to be normal—which perhaps means how life was before his mother’s illness and even before the divorce.
Themes
Conor goes into the house. His grandmother isn’t home yet, so he is entirely alone. He sits on the couch, relishing hearing it creak as he sits. He then gets up and jumps on it, scratching the hardwood floor. He smiles at this destruction. Then he spots his grandmother’s most prized possession: an antique clock. Conor pulls the minute and second hands from their mechanism and spins them ahead. He is in a “feverish blur” that makes him think of being in the nightmare, but this time he is the nightmare. Conor then watches as the second hand falls snaps from the clock face and onto the floor. The clock stops ticking and whirring, and Conor realizes suddenly what he’s done.
This is the first instance in which the toll of Conor’s mother’s illness becomes clear. The more he tries to push away and deny the pain and guilt that he is experiencing, the more angry and violent Conor becomes. Conor is beginning to turn into a monster, born of his inability to truly face and grieve what is happening in his life.
Themes
Conor starts to panic when he notices the time that the clock now reads: 12:07 a.m. When he turns back around, the monster is there, sitting in his grandmother’s living room—though the room is far too small to hold it. The monster announces that it has come to tell the second tale. Conor asks if it’s a “cheating story” like the last one. The monster says that it is about a man who thinks “only of himself,” and who gets punished “very, very badly indeed.” Conor thinks of his father, and says that he is listening.
Just like the first tale, in which Conor immediately conflated his grandmother with the wicked witch, here Conor makes an instant connection between the tale and his father—who is, Conor thinks, the man who thinks only of himself. It seems that Conor is desperate to point fingers and place blame on someone for his mother’s illness and his own changing circumstances.
Themes
