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
Antain spends his first five years as an Elder-in-Training trying to convince himself that his job will get easier. It never does. The Elders berate him every chance they get and for seemingly no reason. Antain’s mother does the same at home and insists that she deserves the honor of Antain being an Elder. Antain isn’t sure. Antain escapes his mother to help the kitchen staff and the gardeners, and then goes to the shed to carve wood, which he loves doing. He tries not to think about the approaching Day of Sacrifice.
This passage makes it clear that Antain is idealistic and hopeful, qualities that aren’t celebrated in the Protectorate. This makes his life even harder because at this point, he’s in the minority when he hopes that things will get better. His attempts to not think about the Day of Sacrifice are attempts to prevent it from being solidified as a real thing in his mind, a form of self-censorship.
Themes
The next morning, Antain goes to the Council Hall to go through citizen complaints and requests, pick out a few important ones, and erase the rest. Once, when he suggested that all the complaints might be important, Gherland insisted that refusing to listen to the people is a gift—it teaches the people that their lives are inconsequential. Antain then prepares the Council rooms and goes to school. It’s an uncharacteristically sunny day and Antain marvels that nobody is out to enjoy the sunlight. It feels hopeful. He looks toward the Tower, where the madwoman has lived for five years now. He can’t get her face or her baby’s face out of his head, and he can’t forgive himself. He feels there has to be another way.
Gherland’s unwillingness to listen to people’s complaints and requests shows another way that the Elders censor the population and thus keep themselves in power. It’s likely that even those requests that Gherland does look at won’t ever incite any change—rather, Gherland likely considers them at all only so that the Council of Elders looks like it cares and will do something, rather than because either of those things are true.
Themes
Antain arrives at school early. He pulls out his journal and works on a plan for a wheeled cabinet for the kind gardener, but Gherland interrupts him and calls him to his office. He insists that school is pointless for Antain, since its point is to amuse children until they can be useful to the Protectorate. Antain knows that he won’t be missed; his teacher gives him high marks no matter what he does, and nobody talks to him. The only person with whom he’d like to speak left school to join the Sisters of the Star last year. Her name is Ethyne. Nobody leaves the Sisters of the Star, but Antain hopes she will anyway.
Gherland’s comment about the purpose of the Protectorate’s school implies that students there aren’t actually getting an education. This makes it clear that school, like the wall for complaints, is just a show; students aren’t graduating with critical thinking skills or the belief that they can make a difference in the world. Instead, they likely graduate with only the bare minimum that they need to function as adults.
Themes
Antain continues to think of the madwoman as Gherland says that the Day of Sacrifice is coming. He lists all the ways that Antain has gotten out of participating in the last few years, from getting suspicious illnesses to fighting suspicious fires singlehandedly. Gherland points out that Antain isn’t fooling anyone, and says that he gave Antain this position against his better judgment. He likes Antain, but Gherland says that he can’t protect him forever. Antain doesn’t understand why he needs to be protected in the first place as he shuffles out the door. Gherland lifts a hand to put it on Antain’s shoulder, but decides not to. Five days later, Antain is home vomiting as the Elders sacrifice another baby. Gherland worries about him.
That Antain is haunted by his memories of the madwoman and of Luna shows how dwelling on sad memories like this can make a person less receptive or reactive to things that are happening around them in real time. Because Antain is so caught up in his memories and is so sad, he’s unable to grasp that Gherland is trying to do him a big favor here by telling him to get in line—the implication is that if Antain won’t shape up, he’ll probably be killed. This also gives another positive and nuanced layer to Gherland’s villainous character, as he’s likely not supposed to be this open with Antain.
Themes
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