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 tells Fyrian a story. It’s about a girl with no memory, a dragon who never grows up, a grandmother who lies, and a swamp monster that loves everyone but doesn’t always know what to say. Luna says again that it’s about a girl who has no memory, but also has no memory of losing her memory. There was a man in a robe and a woman on the ceiling, screaming “she is mine.” There was a Tower too. There was something scary in the woods, though it might be that the woods themselves are scary. Luna wonders if the world itself is poisoned with evil and lies. She tells Fyrian that she doesn’t believe that part.
By shaping what she knows into a story, Luna is able to test out some of her theories. Her response to Fyrian about not believing that the world is poisoned shows that in many ways, Xan has successfully insulated Luna: Luna is hopeful and thinks well of others, rather than believing that the world is just horrible for no reason. As she practices telling stories, Luna also learns that they’re powerful—talking like this helps some of these things feel truer.
Themes
