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 can taste blood in his mouth. He bit the inside of his lip when Harry and his cronies, Anton and Sully, tripped him walking into school just now. The three boys laugh, and Harry tells Conor to be careful of the steps. Harry hasn’t always bullied Conor, but when Conor started having “that nightmare,” Harry started noticing him—“like a secret mark had been placed on him that only Harry could see.”
Ness draws a connection between Conor’s nightmare and the beginning of Harry’s bullying. This implies that Conor’s nightmare, which he refuses to acknowledge to other people, makes him isolated and vulnerable, and therefore more easily victimized.
Themes
Conor starts to get up off of the ground, when he sees a girl in his class, Lily Andrews, coming over. She tells Harry, Anton, and Sully to leave Conor alone. They make fun of him for the fact that Lily is coming over to save him. Harry also notes that Conor is bleeding, and Sully cries that Conor will have to get his “baldy mother to kiss it better for him!” Conor’s stomach turns into “a ball of fire,” and Lily pushes Sully into a bush at this remark.
The fact that Sully makes fun of Conor’s mother because of her cancer is despicable, but the remark horrifies Conor for two additional reasons. The acknowledgement of her illness makes it difficult for Conor to deny that anything is wrong, and it also isolates him from the other students because he becomes singled out and made fun of for it.
Themes
Their teacher, Miss Kwan, storms over, scolding Lily. Lily says that Sully was making fun of Conor’s mother. Everyone freezes, and Conor is both furious and embarrassed. Miss Kwan asks if this is true. Conor looks at the three boys, and says no—he fell, and Harry, Anton, and Sully were helping him up. Lily is stunned, and Miss Kwan sharply asks her to stay behind as the other boys go to their next class. Harry picks up Conor’s backpack and gives it back to him, saying, “Well done.”
Conor turns on Lily here because, as Ness will explain in the next few chapters, she told other people about Conor’s mother’s cancer. This caused people to start to avoid him, and he has become incredibly isolated as a result. His anger with Lily has only exacerbated that isolation.
Themes
