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
That night, Conor lies awake on the couch, thinking about his mother. Usually by this time, three full days after her treatment, she starts to feel better. But she’s still throwing up and exhausted. Conor drifts asleep and starts to have his recurring nightmare, with “the wind roaring and the ground shaking and the hands holding tight but still somehow slipping away.”
Conor understands on some level that his mother is not getting better after this round of treatments, but he refuses to go a step further and acknowledge that this could mean her death very soon. Ness again withholds the crux of Conor’s nightmare, reinforcing the idea that Conor does not want to face it.
Themes
Conor wakes with a shout of terror and tries to quiet himself. He glances at the clock: 12:07 a.m. He goes into the kitchen, looks out the window, and sees the monster in his yard. Conor goes outside, and the monster tells him that it is time for the first story. Conor refuses, telling the monster to leave him alone. The monster is again perplexed that Conor is not frightened of it, but it realizes that Conor “has worse things to be frightened of.”
In realizing that Conor has worse things to be frightened of, the monster acknowledges Conor’s maturity. A large beast is not the thing that Conor fears. Instead, it is the idea of his mother’s death, and that others might find out that he just wants the waiting and suffering to be over—both of which are very adult fears.
Themes
Conor looks away from the monster, feeling “the nightmare feeling” return to him, “making everything seem heavy and impossible.” Conor says that he thought the monster might be there to help him. The monster counters that it is not there to “slay [his] dragons” or “topple [his] enemies,” but that it is going to tell him stories of how he toppled enemies and slew dragons. The monster, glancing at Conor’s bedroom window, where his grandmother is sleeping, says that it is going to tell the story of a wicked queen.
Conor hopes for help from the monster in defeating the pain and suffering that he and his mother are experiencing. But this passage suggests that the monster is really there to help Conor simply acknowledge that pain and suffering in order to help him move past it.Additionally, the monster’s subtle glance at Conor’s window connects the wicked queen to Conor’s grandmother, allowing him to make the connection between the story and his own life.
Themes
