The Girl Who Drank the Moon

by

Kelly Barnhill

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Memory, Forgetting, and the Future Theme Analysis

Themes and Colors
Family and Love Theme Icon
Storytelling, Censorship, and Control Theme Icon
Memory, Forgetting, and the Future Theme Icon
Sorrow vs. Hope Theme Icon
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.
Memory, Forgetting, and the Future Theme Icon

The world of the novel is one that’s about to reach a tipping point: as young enmagicked Luna approaches the age of 13, her magical power grows, while Xan’s power wanes; the sleeping volcano in the woods is about to erupt after 500 years of restless dormancy; and after 500 years of acceptance and complacency in the Protectorate, Antain decides that it’s time to confront the Witch who demands infants as sacrifice and save the Protectorate’s children. For Xan and Glerk, these events are, to a degree, things that they’ve experienced before—but they begin to run into problems when they find that they’ve purposefully forgotten what happened last time. With this, the novel suggests that while forgetting may be a useful tool to protect oneself emotionally, it’s absolutely necessary to remember the past—distant and not so distant—in order to effectively plan and fight for a better future.

When the reader first meets Xan, she’s content and certainly not upset that she doesn’t remember her past (though she does remember that it wasn’t necessarily happy). This outlook on life changes, however, when Xan accidentally enmagicks the infant Luna by feeding her moonlight instead of starlight, making it so that at some point, Luna will be a witch capable of performing magic. At this point, Xan recognizes that she must remember her past, which contains important parallels: like Luna, Xan was enmagicked as a child, and she knows that she’ll need to remember what happened to her mentor Zosimos, since this, she believes, is likely what’s going to happen to her as Luna’s mentor. These leaps in understanding make an important point: while it’s not necessary or healthy for a person to dwell on their past, it’s still important to remember past events. History will, no doubt, repeat itself, and a thorough understanding of the past means that a person will have a better chance of being prepared for the future.

Importantly, the novel suggests that when a person isn’t in a situation where they’re forced to live with past trauma day in and day out (as in the Protectorate), it’s a natural inclination to want to forget the past. The narrator notes that both Glerk and Xan—and to a degree, the dragonling Fyrian—were there for the volcano’s last eruption and the havoc and destruction it wrought. But within a year, Xan and Glerk happily chose to forget, and Fyrian inexplicably remains a dragonling and doesn’t remember the particulars of what happened. Remembering, this implies, is far more emotionally difficult than forgetting. The novel supports this by showing how, as they begin to remember, both Xan and Glerk experience moments of intense remorse and guilt for not keeping the past easily accessible in their minds. They understand that, had they done so, they would’ve been in a better place to protect everyone—themselves, Luna, and those in the Protectorate.

To make the importance of memory to the future even clearer, the novel plays close attention to the consequences of how Xan handles Luna’s volatile magic by placing a spell on five-year-old Luna, which traps Luna’s magic in a rice-grain-sized casing in her brain. The idea, according to Xan, is that with Luna’s magic contained, Luna will be able to learn how to appropriately use it and so be prepared when she turns 13 and her magic is unleashed—but Xan’s spell doesn’t work as planned. Rather than turn Luna into a safe and compliant student of magic, it makes it so that she cannot see, hear, or understand anything concerning magic, as mentioning it sends her into an odd trance that can last for days. In Luna’s case, being physiologically unable to remember magic or learn about it has dire consequences—Xan knows that she’s going to die not long after Luna turns 13, and therefore won’t be around to teach her. Because of the way that Luna and Xan’s respective magics are linked, this means that as Luna gets close to her birthday, Xan becomes increasingly ill as Luna begins to remember odd things and, finally, is able to read the word “magic.” Luna is effectively on her own to figure things out due to Xan’s failing health and the spell. While the narrator makes it very clear that Xan cast this spell on Luna for her own protection, the degree to which Luna struggles without assistance as her magic begins to break free makes it clear that interfering with a person’s memory—especially when that entails forcing someone to forget—is an inhumane and unsafe thing to do.

Luna, Xan, and their friends aren’t able to effectively triumph until they are all able to remember who they are, who they were, and what they’re capable of doing. Because they are ultimately able to remember, Luna is able to save the Protectorate and the Free Cities from the volcano. She’s also able to help her mother, who long ago forgot her name and is known for most of the novel as the madwoman, remember who she is. With this, the novel shows that remembering is important for more than just securing the future and learning how to harness one’s power—it is, in many cases, essential to healing and discovering who a person truly is.

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Memory, Forgetting, and the Future Quotes in The Girl Who Drank the Moon

Below you will find the important quotes in The Girl Who Drank the Moon related to the theme of Memory, Forgetting, and the Future.
Chapter 4 Quotes

Sometimes. I have this dream. About your brother. He would be eighteen now. No. Nineteen. I have this dream that he has dark hair and luminous skin and stars in his eyes. I dream that when he smiles, it shines for miles around. Last night I dreamed that he waited next to a tree for a girl to walk by. And he called her name, and held her hand, and his heart pounded when he kissed her.

What? No. I’m not crying. Why would I cry? Silly thing.

Related Characters: The Parent (speaker)
Page Number: Chapter 4. In Which It Was Just a Dream29
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

But he didn’t kill the Witch. The Witch killed him instead.

This is why it doesn’t pay to be brave. Bravery makes nothing, protects nothing, results in nothing. It only makes you dead. And this is why we don’t stand up to the Witch. Because even a powerful old wizard was no match for her.

Related Characters: The Parent (speaker), Sister Ignatia/The Sorrow Eater, Zosimos, Fyrian’s Mother
Related Symbols: The Witch
Page Number: Chapter 8. In Which a Story Contains a Hint of Truth59
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 9 Quotes

“I remember. All at once.” He shook his head. “Why had I forgotten?”

Xan pushed her wrinkled lips to one side. “Sorrow is dangerous. Or, at least, it was. I can’t remember why, now. I think we both became accustomed to not remembering things. We just let things get...foggy.”

Related Characters: Xan (speaker), Glerk (speaker), Luna, Zosimos
Page Number: Chapter 9. In Which Several Things Go Wrong68
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

The child was never magic, Xan started telling herself. And indeed, the more Xan told herself that it might be true, the more she was able to convince herself that it was true. And if Luna ever was magic, all that power was now neatly stoppered up and wouldn’t be a problem.

Related Characters: Luna, Xan
Page Number: Chapter 14. In Which There Are Consequences109
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

The madwoman in the Tower could not remember her own name.

She could remember no one’s name.

What was a name, anyway? You can’t hold it. You can’t smell it. You can’t rock it to sleep. You can’t whisper your love to it over and over and over again. There was once a name that she treasured above all others. But it had flown away, like a bird. And she could not coax it back.

Related Characters: Luna, The Madwoman/Adara
Page Number: Chapter 16. In Which There Is Ever So Much Paper127
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

Fyrian seemed younger and younger every day. Sometimes, it seemed to Luna that he was going backward in time while she stood still, but other times it seemed that the opposite was true: it was Fyrian who was standing still while Luna raced forward. She wondered why this was.

Dragons! Glerk would explain.

Dragons! Xan would agree. They both shrugged. Dragons, it was decided. What can one do?

Which never actually answered anything.

Related Characters: Luna, Xan, Glerk, Fyrian
Page Number: Chapter 17. In Which There Is a Crack in the Nut136-37
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

Luna didn’t have very many memories that were as tenacious as this one—her memory, typically, was a slippery thing, and difficult to pin down—and so she hung on to it. This image meant something. She was sure of it.

Her grandmother, now that she thought about it, never spoke of memories. Not ever.

Related Characters: Luna, Xan, Antain, The Madwoman/Adara, Grand Elder Gherland
Page Number: Chapter 19. In Which There Is a Journey to the Town of Agony161
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 38 Quotes

But as the clouds broke and the sky began to clear, they found themselves feeling something else, too. Something they had never felt before.

Here is the baby holding her own sweet baby. My grandchild. Here is her knowing that no one will ever take that child away.

Hope. They felt hope.

Here is the baby in his circle of friends. He is laughing. He loves his life.

Joy. They felt joy.

Related Characters: Antain, Ethyne
Related Symbols: The Witch
Page Number: Chapter 38. In Which the Fog Begins to Lift314
Explanation and Analysis: