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The Wildness of Stories
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 town was once a kingdom, the monster begins. The king and his wife had four sons, but over the course of the king’s rein, battles and hardship had taken the lives of the four princes, as well as the king’s wife and daughter. All he had left he had left was an infant grandson, the young prince. Conor is skeptical that this sounds too much like a fairy tale, but the monster tells him to be quiet.
As the monster begins, Conor continues to be skeptical that he can gain anything from the stories that the monster is telling. But over the course of the story, Conor starts to draw connections between the tale and his own life.
Themes
The king decided to remarry, setting his sights on a princess from a neighboring kingdom. She was young and fair, and soon became the queen. Time passed; the young prince turned sixteen, and the king grew ill. Rumors began to spread that the queen had been poisoning him, and had been using magic to make herself look younger. The king died a year before the prince was old enough to take the throne, and so the queen became regent.
The monster’s description of the queen has some echoes of Conor’s criticism of his grandmother. Conor feels like his grandmother is constantly trying to make herself seem younger, highlighting her connection to this character, whom many believe is also trying to make herself look younger.
Themes
The prince, meanwhile, had fallen in love with a farmer’s daughter, and the kingdom “smiled on the match.” The queen, however, wanted to marry the young prince in order to continue ruling. The prince and the farmer’s daughter decided to run away together. As they rode off, they stopped to sleep together in the shade of a yew tree—the monster. When the prince woke up, he saw that he and the farmer’s daughter were covered in blood. Someone had murdered his beloved and left a knife to make it look like he had done it.
Ness makes further subtle connections between this parable and what Conor is experiencing in his own life. Conor—who is represented here by the young prince—feels that he is old enough to take care of the household and his mother, while his grandmother wants to take over the household and make changes in his life, which he resists.
Themes
The prince cried out that the queen was responsible for this—that she was trying to frame him so he would be put to death for his crime and she could rule freely. He asked the monster for help, and told the villagers that the queen murdered the farmer’s daughter. The prince was so beloved by the people that they stormed the castle immediately, especially when they saw the monster walking with the prince. The mob then seized the queen and dragged her to be burned at the stake.
Again, a connection can be made between Conor’s situation and the monster’s story. The prince does not like the queen, but that doesn’t automatically mean that she is a murderer. Even though Conor doesn’t like his grandmother very much, it doesn’t mean that she’s not trying her best to take care of him and his mother.
Themes
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Conor smiles, saying she deserved it. He then glances at his bedroom, where his grandmother is sleeping. He doesn’t want to burn her alive, but wonders if the monster could help him deal with her. The monster says that his story is not yet finished.
Conor believes that the monster’s story is an attempt to show Conor how he can help with his situation—again highlighting the connection between the queen and his grandmother because he hopes the monster can get rid of her, too. But the fact that the story isn’t finished yet casts doubt upon Conor’s assumption.
Themes
