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 opens his eyes. He is lying on the hill above his house. He asks the monster why the fire didn’t kill him; he believes that he deserves the worst. Conor admits that he’s always known that his mother wasn’t going to make it. His mother told him that she was getting better because that’s what he wanted to hear. And he believed her, but he also didn’t believe her. Conor explains that he started to think that he just ‘wanted it to be over.” He “couldn’t stand the waiting,” and he “couldn’t stand how alone it made [him] feel.” The monster adds that Conor wished the pain and isolation would just end, even if that meant losing his mother. Conor admits that he let his mother go, even though he could have held on for longer.
Conor’s thoughts show the complexity of his denial: he wanted to believe that his mother was going to be okay, even though deep down he understood that this was unlikely—a fact that only added to his ultimate grief when faced with the prospect of her death. Conor also ties in the fact of how his pain and grief isolated him, because his friends and teachers no longer knew how to treat him. This lack of support only added to his grief, because he had no one to turn to for support.
Themes
Conor cries that he didn’t mean to let his mother go, and that now she’s going to die and it’s his fault. The monster comforts Conor, taking him into its arms and forming a little nest to hold him. The monster assures Conor that it is not his fault—that he merely wished for the end of pain, and an end to how that pain isolated him. That is “the most human wish of all.”
The monster’s comfort is key here. In contrast to Conor’s family members, who either treat him like a kid (his mother and grandmother) or like an adult (his father), the monster allows Conor to both grow up and remain a child. It gives him the tools to accept his mother’s illness, but it also protects and comforts him after that difficult recognition.
Themes
Conor repeats that he didn’t mean it; the monster says that Conor did and did not mean it. Conor asks how both things can be true. The monster says that humans are “complicated beasts,” referring back to the stories it told. “How can a prince be a murderer and a saviour?” it asks. “You wanted [your mother] to go at the same time you were desperate for me to save her,” it tells Conor.
The monster then reveals the purpose of its stories: to demonstrate the complexity of human nature and emotion. Just like the various characters of its stories, Conor had a set of contradictory emotions and feelings concerning his mother’s illness, but that does not make him a bad person.
Themes
Conor asks how a person can combat their internal conflict. The monster replies that all one has to do is speak the truth. The monster then tells Conor that it came to help Conor heal, and it assures him that his thoughts are not important, only his actions. He does not have to be guilty for his thoughts. Conor, exhausted, then falls asleep in the monster’s nest.
In this exchange, Ness highlights the idea that in order to alleviate one’s pain and suffering, the first step is to acknowledge it. Only by confessing what has been bothering Conor is the monster then able to comfort him.
Themes
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