Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Girl Who Drank the Moon, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family and Love
Storytelling, Censorship, and Control
Memory, Forgetting, and the Future
Sorrow vs. Hope
Summary
Analysis
Luna feels as though she’ll never be 12. She’s quick to learn, but is frustrated by how much she doesn’t yet know. She feels that there’s something missing. Once Luna turns 12, she finds that this feeling doesn’t go away and many other unpleasant changes occur. She’s tall, peevish, and distracted. She also realizes that there are books in the workshop that she’s never read. Luna can’t remember their titles, and though she knows that she should be able to read the words, she can’t. When she looks at them, she goes fuzzy for hours. Luna doesn’t tell anyone since she doesn’t want to worry them. It’s embarrassing and strange, and Luna knows that it’s wrong. Luna also starts to draw. She draws maps, a tower, and a woman with black hair.
Again, the novel ties together Luna’s emerging magic and the resurfacing of Luna’s memories of her mother and the Protectorate. This indicates that Luna’s journey is as much one of self-discovery as it is a journey to destroy the Protectorate’s broader censorship . In this situation, Luna’s normal teenage emotions (prickliness and the sense that there’s something wrong with her) magnify the things that actually are amiss. These feelings, in turn, make Luna even less willing to ask for help.
Themes
Later that year, Luna and Xan go to the Free Cities to check in on the pregnant women. Luna feels prickly and worried, as Xan seems weak and pained—though she insists she’s fine. Luna knows it’s a lie. When they get to the first town, Luna runs ahead and tells a widow woman that Xan isn’t well. By the time Xan arrives, half the town is there and ready to help her feel better. The townsfolk praise Luna, which isn’t unusual. Luna, however, doesn’t know why they admire her. One woman sighs that Luna sounds like magic. Xan shoots the woman a dirty look. Luna knows that she’s heard that word before, but it flies out of her head.
Now that Luna is getting older, she’s more aware of the fact that Xan doesn’t always tell the truth. This begins to turn Xan into a real human being for Luna, rather than an idealized grandmother or parent figure. This does, however, also mean that Luna feels less able to trust someone who she should be able to rely upon unequivocally. In this way, the novel illustrates how silence and secrecy tend to breed even more of the same.
Themes
Luna sits with Star Children, the youngest an infant and the oldest an elderly man. They discuss their earliest memories, trying to remember life before Xan brought them to their families. Luna thinks of things and wonders if they’re memories or dreams. She says that she remembers an old man with swishy robes who didn’t like her. Xan rolls her eyes and says that this is silly, but Luna goes on. She remembers a woman hanging from the ceiling, but Xan says that she’s been there for Luna’s whole life. Luna says that she remembers a boy who smelled like sawdust, but Xan explains this away. Few of Luna’s memories are as strong as this one. She knows it means something and thinks that Xan never talks about memories.
To Xan’s credit, there’s no real way to confirm yet if Luna is making things up, reciting an actual dream, or if these recollections are real. But by shutting Luna down and insisting that her memories aren’t real, Luna again feels less able to trust Xan with her private thoughts or musings. Then, when Luna realizes that Xan never talks about memories, and that her own memories aren’t as strong, it suggests that Luna will better able than Xan to grasp the importance of remembering.
Themes
The next day, Luna accompanies Xan as she checks on pregnant women. The first woman is very pregnant and doesn’t even get up to greet them. As is customary, Luna kisses the woman’s cheek and touches her belly. She feels the baby leap, and a lump rises in her throat. Luna busies herself making tea and thinks that she had a mother once. She makes a list of things she knows, including that sorrow is dangerous, memories are difficult, and that neither she nor Xan always tell the truth. The woman asks for Luna to put her hands on her belly since she lives “in the presence of magic,” but Xan shoos Luna outside before Luna’s thinking goes fuzzy. When she comes to, she is pouring cold tea.
Luna’s list of things she knows are true suggests that she’s more interested in telling and discovering the truth than she is in hiding things, like Xan does. However, because Luna can’t retain anything to do with magic, she’s unable to figure anything out. Therefore, she cannot feel safe or comfortable asking Xan about her origins. While the reader knows that Xan wouldn’t be able to tell Luna anyway without Luna going into a spell, the fact that Luna doesn’t know this makes it even more frustrating for her.
Themes
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At the next house, Luna arranges herbs and furniture. The woman praises Luna, and Xan says that Luna is so smart because she’s Xan’s. Luna feels a cold rush and remembers black hair and a woman screaming “she’s mine.” Luna can hear the woman screaming in her head, but Xan doesn’t seem to notice. The rest of the journey is uneventful. Xan and Luna don’t speak about Luna’s memories, and the things they don’t talk about begin to outweigh the things they do talk about.
At this point in Luna’s journey, these memories aren’t comfortable, even if they feel true and real. This suggests that for now, at least, Luna is more willing than Xan to engage with her memories. However, that Luna is forced to do so privately means that she’s not able to draw on familial support to make sense of what she remembers.
Themes
