Mom Character Analysis in Monkey Beach

Mom, whose proper name is Gladys Hill, is Dad’s wife and Jimmy and Lisa’s mother. She grew up in Kitamaat Village, the granddaughter of one of the Haisla’s last powerful medicine women. When she was a child, she had the gift of contact with the spirit world and could often predict people’s impending deaths. She earned the nickname “Crash” when she tried to emulate her favorite movie star by using cookie sheets to ski down one of the hills in town. In high school, she briefly dated Uncle Mick before he left town, after which she began to date Dad and eventually married him. In her youth, she worked in the cannery for a short time and then went to beauty school. Mom is a grounding force in Lisa’s life, often counteracting (and reprimanding) Lisa for her wildness—but nevertheless giving her a safe place in which to grow up and learn about herself and the world. She participates in many of the traditional activities of the Haisla life, like fishing and preparing oolichan grease, but she also presents herself as a thoroughly modern woman with nice clothing, delicate jewelry, and flawless makeup and manicures.

Mom Quotes in Monkey Beach

The Monkey Beach quotes below are all either spoken by Mom or refer to Mom. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

Now that I think back, the pattern of the little man’s visits seems unwelcomely obvious, but at the time, his arrivals and departures had no meaning. As I grew older, he became a variation of the monster under the bed or the thing in the closet, a nightmare that faded with morning. He liked to sit on the top of my dresser when he came to visit, and he had a shock of bright red hair which stood up in messy, tangled puffs that he sometimes hid under a black top hat. When he was in a mean mood, he did a jerky little dance and pretended to poke at my eyes. The night before the hawks came, he drooped his head and blew me sad kisses that sparkled silver and gold in the dark and fell as soft as confetti.

Related Characters: Lisa (speaker), Mom, Dad, Ma-ma-oo

Related Symbols: The Little Man

Page Number and Citation: 27

Explanation and Analysis:

Contacting the dead, lesson one. Sleep is an altered state of consciousness. To fall asleep is to fall into a deep, healing trance. In the spectrum of realities, being awake is on one side and being asleep is way, way on the other. To be absorbed in a movie, a game, or work is to enter a light trance. Daydreams, prayers or obsessing are heavier trances. Most people enter trances reflexively. To contact the spirit world, you must control the way you enter this state of being that is somewhere between waking and sleeping.

Related Characters: Lisa (speaker), Uncle Mick, Ma-ma-oo, Mom, Jimmy, Ba-ba-oo

Page Number and Citation: 139

Explanation and Analysis:

“He’s a guide, but not a reliable one. Never trust the spirit world too much. They think different from the living.”

“What about Mom?”

“When Gladys was very young, lots of death going on […] She used to know who was going to die next […]”

“Mom doesn’t see anything” […]

“She doesn’t tell you […] Or she’s forgotten how […] Her grandmother, now she was a real medicine woman. Oh, people were scared of her. If you wanted to talk to your dead, she was the one people went to. She could really dance, and she made beautiful songs—that no one sings any more […]”

“[…] How do you do medicine?”

“All the people knew the old ways are gone. Anyone else is doing it in secret these days. But there’s good medicine and bad. Best not to deal with it at all if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Related Characters: Lisa (speaker), Ma-ma-oo (speaker), Uncle Mick, Mom

Related Symbols: The Little Man

Page Number and Citation: 153-154

Explanation and Analysis:

Most people only learn about their body when something goes wrong with it. Mom could tell you anything about skin when she got her first deep wrinkle. Dad could talk for hours about the stomach after he got a hiatus hernia. After she had her first attack, Ma-ma-oo read everything she could about the human heart.

The doctors gave her pamphlets, a slew of nurses sat patiently by her bed and drew her pictures of what had gone wrong, and Mom tried to translate the jargon into something that made sense […] When she came back to the Kitimat hospital, I would visit her after school, catching the late bus home after we had looked at my picture book describing the heart. Even in the kids’ books, the technical words were confusing.

Related Characters: Lisa (speaker), Ma-ma-oo, Mom, Dad

Page Number and Citation: 235-236

Explanation and Analysis:

“Alberni? Really? There’s a treatment centre where the residential school used to be?” one of the women said to Aunt Trudy.

Another woman laughed, then said, “Hey, how many priests does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

“How many?”

“Three. One to screw it, one to beat it for being screwed and one to tell the lawyers that no screwing took place.”

“That’s not funny,” Josh said.

“That’s the point,” the woman said.

Related Characters: Josh (speaker), Aunt Trudy (speaker), Tab, Uncle Mick, Karaoke (Adelaine Jones), Dad, Mom, Lisa

Page Number and Citation: 310

Explanation and Analysis:

Mom Character Timeline in Monkey Beach

The timeline below shows where the character Mom appears in Monkey Beach. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

When the Coast Guard called the night before, Mom answered the phone but became too distraught to answer their questions, so Lisa took over.... (full context)

...says he might have sunk the boat for insurance purposes. Going downstairs, Lisa finds her mom and dad in the kitchen, listening to the marine emergency channel on their high-frequency radio.... (full context)

...bread—she’s the acknowledged master in the family and won’t let anyone, least of all Lisa’s mom, call her skills into question. (full context)

...slow-moving boat. Jimmy stays at the front of the boat the whole trip (except when Mom forces him to eat lunch), camera at the ready. When they arrive, he grows frantically... (full context)

...little man. He shakes his head when she asks if it’s his dog, but then Mom calls her from the house for lunch. Afterward, when she takes Mom to see the... (full context)

Lisa’s mom has always (incorrectly) blamed Uncle Mick for introducing her to smoking. She looks at Dad... (full context)

In a flashback, Lisa remembers the day Mick returned. It was Mom’s birthday. Midmorning, a tall, tanned man with long, braided hair and a fringed, buckskin leather... (full context)

Before Mick and Dad can start arguing, Mom insists that Dad tell Mick the story of the dishes. It happened when Lisa was... (full context)

The spring of Uncle Mick’s return is warm and sunny. Dad starts a garden, with Mom’s permission but not her participation. He has an incredibly green thumb, and everything he plants—even... (full context)

In the present, Mom shakes Lisa out of her reverie about Uncle Mick and the chickens to say that... (full context)

...summer in the calm waters of the bay on the other side of the village. Mom always made Lisa take Jimmy with her. Of all the summer days she and Jimmy... (full context)

...him tag along to Erica’s house with her. When she goes home later that night, Mom waits for her in the living room, upset that Lisa barred Jimmy from Erica’s house.... (full context)

...who married her kidnapper. Tab declares the woman a “horny slut,” astonishing Lisa. Her own mom never lets her “swear” like that. (full context)

Soon afterward, Lisa recalls, her Mom and Dad—and pretty much everyone else in the village—goes to Terrace for a wedding. They... (full context)

In a flashback to another, earlier moment in her childhood, Lisa reminisces about the time one of Dad’s cousins died and the... (full context)

...table suddenly become tense when Ma-ma-oo arrives and sees Trudy there. Ma-ma-oo, Trudy, Lisa, and Mom sit through the feast in strained silence, punctuated by snappish comments about respecting one’s elders... (full context)

...taking them to the corner store for ice cream in hot weather. But one time, Mom drives the kids over only to find Mick raving in his living room, pulling apart... (full context)

Mom and Mick take Lisa to the Emergency Room, where Frank waits for treatment with his... (full context)

...means he doesn’t have to. He hates it because Ba-ba-oo used to force him. Meanwhile Mom thinks it’s silly, and Jimmy prefers the indoors. Mick always picks the scrawniest trees for... (full context)

...finds that Aunt Edith has cleaned the whole house and filled the fridge with food. Mom and Dad call, their conversation filled with awkward pauses and aggressive cheerfulness. After Lisa hangs... (full context)

...to the family’s fishing spot by speedboat, planning to meet Uncle Geordie, Aunt Edith, and Mom there. Dad stays home to take Jimmy to a swim meet. They leave on a... (full context)

...fun with the story of their first date. It happened in the winter. Dad left Mom at his house and went to town for beer, where he got stuck waiting for... (full context)

...to sleep for the rest of the trip. When Mick rouses Lisa, she can see Mom waiting on the beach through Mick’s binoculars. (full context)

When Mick lands the boat and Lisa scrambles ashore, she asks Mom about the buildings she glimpses through the trees. Mom explains that there used to be... (full context)

While Mom makes dinner, Uncle Mick and Lisa collect water. Lisa can barely keep up with her... (full context)

Back in the house, Mick tells Mom that Lisa heard ghosts. Mom glares at him, accusing him of telling Ba-ba-oo’s ghost story.... (full context)

...about how Christian missionaries tortured and indoctrinated Indigenous children like himself in the residential schools. Mom intervenes, insisting that Mick come with her to look for oolichans in Kitlope Lake. Lisa... (full context)

Tall and glaciated mountains surround Kitlope Lake. At the river’s entrance, Mom and Mick wash their faces ritualistically. Mom points out where a landslide swallowed a village... (full context)

Mick and Mom unload camping supplies and send Lisa to look for the seagulls, which will point them... (full context)

...wakes up when Mick carries her to the tent, and she listens to him and Mom talking about his plans. Mom wants him to find a wife and have kids. She... (full context)

As Mick makes breakfast, he and Mom tease each other familiarly. On their way back to Kemano, Mom stops the boat to... (full context)

The temperature has fallen by the time Mom, Mick, and Lisa return to Kemano. Uncle Geordie and Aunt Edith are up at Alcan... (full context)

...house but slips back out to the porch when she noticed him sneaking up behind Mom. She watches as he wraps his arms gently around Mom’s waist and tenderly kisses her... (full context)

Later, Aunt Edith tells Lisa about their misadventure on the trip home. She, Mick, and Mom were towing the small punt boat when a wave flooded and sank it, threatening to... (full context)

...Lisa, attacking Lisa’s “precious Uncle Mick” as an old “horny dog,” drunk and “panting” after Mom. Tab and Lisa retreat to the basement as soon as they can. (full context)

...a sly way to trick her aunt into revealing the truth, she asks outright if Mom and Uncle Mick had an affair. Trudy explains that Mick dated Mom but left before... (full context)

...a stranger to her, but Lisa thinks about how he was the one who dated Mom. Aunt Trudy wails and makes a scene at the graveside and at Ma-ma-oo’s house where... (full context)

...salmon, which he divvies up between his in-laws, Ma-ma-oo, and Lisa’s parents. Lisa goes with Mom to help Ma-ma-oo smoke the fish. Although the work is hard, she loves it. She... (full context)

...casually as she can—what seeing this spirit means. This stops Ma-ma-oo short. She explains that Mom used to have a strong connection with the spirits, even though she tells Lisa the... (full context)

...warns Lisa that the little man is an unreliable guide, then she explains that when Mom was a little girl, she could tell who was going to die. There was a... (full context)

One winter evening, Jimmy approaches Lisa as she sits at the table doing homework. Mom and Dad are out. Jimmy has Dad’s car keys in his hand, and he suggests... (full context)

...and the police car pulls them over. The officer drives Lisa and Jimmy home, where Mom and Dad yell at Lisa for hours and ground her for weeks. She never blames... (full context)

...anatomy facts from biology class. She regrets not going to Namu for the search with Mom and Dad in the first place, even though she suspects they didn’t want her with... (full context)

Back at home, Lisa finds Mom’s sewing scissors and hacks off her hair. Mom catches her and waits (with some difficulty)... (full context)

In the present, the weather turns squally. Lisa wonders where Mom and Dad are and thinks about how easily Dad gets seasick. If they’re on one... (full context)

...and his cronies to her 11th birthday party instead of Erica and the old gang. Mom, assuming Lisa had only meant one or two when she asked if she could invite... (full context)

Around this time, Mom starts cutting hair for ladies in the village. She is a trained hairdresser, and the... (full context)

At home, Lisa finds Mom cleaning up the blood from Alexis’s latest victim—the cat is a skillful hunter. After Alexis... (full context)

...Mission,” which eventually turned into the modern village of Kitamaat. Ma-ma-oo once told Lisa that Mom’s grandmother refused to move to the mission, continuing to travel between the traditional summer and... (full context)

Despite—or because of—Mom’s reticence, Lisa loves looking through her Ma-ma-oo’s box of old, unsorted family photos. She remembers... (full context)

...up, tells Trudy to call back when she is calmer, then he goes upstairs with Mom to talk to Tab. Lisa hungrily eats snacks in the kitchen. Afterward, she brings some... (full context)

Soon after Tab leaves, Mom and Dad leave Lisa at Ma-ma-oo’s for the night while they go to a dance.... (full context)

...touching her shoulder. She screams and screams at him to get out until Dad and Mom burst into the room with improvised weapons, convinced that someone has broken in. Unable to... (full context)

...as much as she can about the human heart, even though its physiology is complicated. Mom and Lisa help too, although they also struggle to decipher the medical jargon. Ma-ma-oo annoys... (full context)

Lisa is with Pooch the day Mom busts her for smoking. Mom drags her home and sends her to her room until... (full context)

...no. She storms home and holes up in her room, isolating herself so severely that Mom basically forces her to go with Dad to one of Jimmy’s swim meets a few... (full context)

...stumbles into her bedroom that night, Tab assures her that she hid her absence from Mom and Dad. Lisa feels nauseated and exhausted, and Tab, assuming Lisa is on her period,... (full context)

While Lisa is in the bathroom one morning a few days later, Mom calls her downstairs. Frank has stopped by. Lisa and Frank sit on the bottom step... (full context)

...sees another world superimposed on the real world. She sees ghosts predicting people’s deaths. When Mom and Dad take her to the hospital for tests, she runs into Pooch. His grandmother... (full context)

Around this time, Lisa’s mom and dad arrange for her to see a therapist. Doris Jenkins, the therapist, has frazzled... (full context)

...so poor that the school suggested “modified classes” for her. The narrative picks up as Mom and Dad sit Lisa down for an intervention. Lisa declares her intention to get a... (full context)

...home economics class when she’s paged to the office. Ma-ma-oo has had a stroke, and Mom picks Lisa up to go to the hospital. She assures Lisa that the stroke was... (full context)

Ma-ma-oo leaves everything—$219,800 dollars saved after a life of frugal living—to Lisa. Lisa tells Mom and Dad to use it however they want. They pay off some debts, put some... (full context)

...care of herself for a while, Trudy reasons. Trudy tells Lisa how upset and worried Mom and Dad are and offers Lisa a place to crash for as long as she... (full context)

...the motel and ends up talking her into going home. When she opens the door, Mom looks strange without her makeup or jewelry on. She offers Lisa coffee and asks how... (full context)

While Mom makes up Lisa’s bed, Lisa asks why Jimmy quit swimming. Mom explains that he injured... (full context)

...with her boyfriend. When Lisa announces that she’s going back to school starting in January, Mom, Dad, and Erica place bets on how long she will last. Jimmy points out that... (full context)

...to “find mimayus.” Jimmy doesn’t come home that night or the following morning. By dinnertime, Mom starts to worry, and Lisa borrows Uncle Geordie’s truck to drive up into the mountains.... (full context)

...a celebratory meal of rice, canned fish, and seaweed. Jimmy brings Karaoke over. She and Mom sit in tense silence, unsure what to say to each other. Afterwards, Lisa follows Karaoke... (full context)

...he was relieved, in a way, since the injury meant he couldn’t mess up everything Mom and Dad had put into his swimming career. At first swimming was fun and he... (full context)

...show her the tiny diamond promise ring he’s bought for Karaoke. At breakfast, he asks Mom how much a proper wedding costs. She chokes on her toast, then replies it’s a... (full context)

...and they busily start figuring how long it will take him to save that amount. Mom mutters that the bigger a wedding is, the faster the divorce happens, while Lisa tries... (full context)

...With hollow eyes, he announces that he’s going fishing as a deckhand on Josh’s boat. Mom is thrilled that he’s getting on the water, making some money, and (although she doesn’t... (full context)

Mom Character Analysis

Mom Quotes in Monkey Beach

Chapter 1: Love Like the Ocean Quotes

Chapter 2: The Song of Your Breath Quotes

Chapter 3: In Search of the Elusive Sasquatch Quotes

Mom Character Timeline in Monkey Beach