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 thinks to himself that perhaps this is why the monster has come: to cure his mother. Conor walks down the corridor and sees his grandmother and his father arguing. Conor asks what’s going on; his father says that he has to fly back home that night, because his baby daughter is sick. He’s sure that the baby is fine, but his wife Stephanie gets very worried about her and asked him to come home immediately. Conor’s father says he’ll be back within two weeks.
Conor’s father clearly understands the responsibility of being a parent and taking care of a child, but it is also clear that he is prioritizing his new family over his old one and pushing off a lot of his responsibility onto Conor.
Themes
Conor’s father takes Conor to a park across from the hospital. He tells Conor that the new medicine his mother is taking probably won’t heal her. Conor contradicts him, saying that he knows it will cure her. Conor’s father says that the boy’s grandmother is angry because she believes that neither of his parents have been honest with him about what’s happening. Conor is still adamant that the new medicine will work.
Conor’s father is trying to be realistic with Conor, but at the same time he is not allowing for hope or a belief that the treatment might work, which seems reminiscent of the parson, who didn’t believe in the Apothecary’s methods. This lack of belief deeply upsets Conor, who is still trying to maintain that everything will be okay and go back to normal.
Themes
Conor’s father says that “stories don’t always have happy endings,” which stops Conor in his tracks. Conor’s father admits that what is happening is unfair and cruel, and assures him he’ll be back soon. Conor points that his father will just leave again, though, because he has another family. As Conor walks off, leaving his father, he is certain that the treatment work—it has to be the reason that the monster is coming.
Conor is so taken aback by his father’s comment because he realizes that this is what the monster has taught him, more than anything else up to this point. Life, like the monster’s stories, doesn’t always have happy endings, or clear-cut protagonists or antagonists—an idea that Conor has been struggling with.
Themes
