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 and his grandmother burst into his mother’s hospital room at 11:46 p.m. Her eyes are closed, and she is breathing heavily. They take her hands: behind Conor, the monster places its hands on Conor to help hold him up, and tells him that all he has to do is tell the truth. Conor feels “his throat choking again and his eyes watering,” knowing that telling the truth will be hard.
Conor has one final thing to accept: the fact that his mother’s death will be excruciatingly painful. Up until this point he has been trying to push this fact away, but now he acknowledges that the right thing to do is to tell his mother how he really feels.
Themes
Conor understands that there is “no going back”—that his mother is going to die. He knows that it will be terrible, and he also knows that he will survive. “It was for this that the monster came,” Conor realizes. The monster assures Conor that it will stay with Conor until the end.
Conor speaks the final truth. “I don’t want you to go,” he tells his mother, tears spilling from his eyes. She says, “I know, my love.” He puts his arms around her and holds her. He knows that the end will come soon, maybe even in a few minutes. “But not this moment,” the monster whispers. Conor holds tightly onto his mother, “and by doing so, he could finally let her go.”
In finally telling his mother that he doesn’t want her to go, Conor avoids the future that she predicted: that someday he might not forgive himself for being angry with his mother in his precious final moments with her. The monster, in helping Conor to accept the truth about his mother’s death, prevents this from happening. It helps Conor to acknowledge his pain and grief, but it also enables him to be able to move past that grief someday.
Themes
