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
Later that night, Fyrian sobs and sleeps in the garden while Luna returns to Adara, Antain, and Ethyne. Glerk thinks that things are as they should be, and slips to Xan’s side. He looks at her empty body, gathers starlight, and wraps it around Xan. Xan wakes up and asks where they are. She’s a girl and an old woman all at once. With a smile, Glerk tells her the story of the Bog creating the Beast. Xan sighs, and Glerk says that everything is bound by infinite love. Xan stands and asks if Glerk is taking her to the Bog. Glerk says that it’s all the same: The Beast is the Bog is the Poet is the World is the Poem, and they all love her. They join hands and walk toward the Bog.
By returning to the Bog himself and taking Xan with him, Glerk makes the case that the future and the past are intrinsically connected. As the Bog and the Poet, Glerk has the ability to write the future of the world and involve Xan in the process, just as she allowed him to join in the process of raising Luna and Fyrian. Xan returning to a lifelike state to enter the Bog also casts a more hopeful light on death, as it shows that death doesn’t necessarily have to be a sad thing, as Xan gets to be with Glerk forever.
Themes
The next day, Luna and Adara climb to the Tower. Adara puts an arm around Luna, but Luna takes her hand instead. When they open the door, crying Sisters greet them. Xan is gone. Luna realizes that to love is to lose. She sits down and finds a piece of paper. It has a poem on it about how the heart is built of starlight, time, and longing. The world spins as love reveals itself. Glerk says that he’s gone, but he’ll return. Luna dries her eyes and folds the poem into a swallow. She steps outside, and the paper bird’s wings shiver. Luna’s chest hurts, but she feels happy. She tells the swallow to see the world. It flies away.
Letting this paper bird go, just as Luna let Xan go and as Glerk let her go, allows Luna to make the final connection that to love someone is to lose them in some way or another. Now, she understands that she can both grieve and be happy, as there’s no limit to what her heart can hold. The paper bird taking flight from Luna’s hands suggests that going forward, Luna will spread hope just as Adara tried to do with her birds from the Tower.
Themes
