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A Note
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Monster Calls, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Death, Denial, and Acceptance
Storytelling
Isolation
Family and Growing Up
Summary
Analysis
Conor’s grandmother takes Conor to his mother’s hospital room. Conor had never been pulled out of school before to visit her. Conor finds his mother smiling, but he can also see in her eyes that she is frightened and sad. Conor feels himself “slowly starting to get very, very angry.” She tells him that the new treatment isn’t working. Her voice is thick, and her eyes are wet. Conor asks how it could not be working, “almost like he [is] asking someone else.”
Conor’s anger is born of the fact that he thought the monster (in the form of a yew tree) would heal his mother, since the doctors’ last-ditch effort to safe Conor’s mother comes in the form of medicine made from yew trees. Conor has been using the yew tree as a way of assuring himself that his mother was going to get better, but this moment suggests that he can’t remain in denial for much longer.
Themes
Conor’s mother tells Conor that there are no more treatments to try. She apologizes profusely. Conor accuses her, saying that she said this treatment would work, which means that she lied. She says that she did believe it would work, and that that belief is probably what kept her alive so long. She reaches out to Conor, but he moves his hand away.
Conor’s mother shows why her son’s denial is so heartbreaking and complicated. Conor’s ability to believe that she would get better kept her alive, but at the same time it only prolonged their pain as she slowly died.
Themes
Crying, Conor’s mother says that she understands if Conor is angry, and that if in the future he looks back and feels upset with himself for being angry, she wants him to know that it was okay to be angry. He nods. She apologizes again and takes more painkillers. She says that she wishes she had a hundred years to give to him. As the drugs enter her system, Conor’s mother falls asleep. Conor’s grandmother pokes her head in the room and Conor demands to be taken home—to his home. His eyes are red “with grief, with shame, with anger.”
Conor’s mother understands the cost of Conor’s denial—that it has caused him to be angry with her when he finally had to accept that she wouldn’t get better. Conor has spent so long holding in his sadness that those emotions have become a kind of misdirected rage. This was also the case when Conor destroyed his grandmother’s living room and beat up Harry.
Themes
