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The First Tale
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
The monster explains that when the people tried to burn the queen at the stake, the monster reached in to save her, and carried her away so that the villagers could never find her. Conor is aghast, protesting that she was a murderer. The monster clarifies: it never said that she killed the farmer’s daughter; only that the prince said so. Conor asks who killed the girl.
The monster’s first tale highlights that often life and people are more complex that they appear at first blush—a principle that Conor has a hard time learning from this story and the other two stories that the monster tells him.
Themes
The monster gathers a mist to show Conor what happened. Where his backyard once was, Conor sees a field with the prince and the farmer’s daughter sleeping under the yew tree. He sees the prince wake up, take a knife out of his bag, and stab his lover. Conor is shocked. The monster explains that the prince then went back to sleep. When he woke up again, “he acted out a pantomime” in case anyone was watching—and also for himself. “Sometimes people need to lie to themselves most of all,” the monster explains.
The monster’s statement here reinforces Conor’s own connection to the young prince, particularly the idea that he had to lie to himself more than anyone else. Conor is a master at self-deception, as he tries to convince himself that his mother is going to be just fine despite knowing deep down that she will probably not get better.
Themes
The monster goes on, saying that when the prince asked for help, he told the monster that he had done it for the good of the kingdom. The queen was a witch and he couldn’t overthrow her alone; he needed the fury of the villagers. Conor protests that he didn’t need to kill the farmer’s daughter—that they would have rallied behind him anyway. The monster explains that that’s why it saved the queen.
This element of the parable also has implications for Conor’s own life: that he doesn’t have to be antagonistic to his grandmother. Conor will grow up and be in control of his own life, but the path to get there doesn’t have to be as fraught as he is making it.
Themes
Conor asks if the prince got caught; the monster explains that the prince became a beloved king and ruled happily for the rest of his life. Conor wonders if the lesson he’s supposed to learn is that he should be nice to his grandmother. The monster laughs at Conor, asking, “You think I have come walking out of time and earth itself to teach you a lesson in niceness?”
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The monster then explains that the queen was a witch and might have done great evil. But she was not a murderer, it emphasizes. Conor doesn’t understand, wondering who the “good guy” is. The monster explains that there is not always a good guy and a bad guy, that most people are “somewhere in between.”
Conor feels tricked and cheated by the story, wondering how it’s supposed to save him from his grandmother. The monster emphasizes that it is not his grandmother that Conor needs saving from. Then Conor wakes up, back on the couch. The clock reads 12:07 a.m., and he sees a foot-tall sapling has sprouted from a knot in a floorboard. He goes to get a knife to saw it out of the floor.
Even though Conor doesn’t fully understand how the story is relevant to him, it appears that the point of the story is to show that while Conor’s grandmother isn’t perfect, she certainly isn’t evil, as he believes her to be. It seems the monster’s stories are meant to give Conor insight into human nature and the messy complexities of life—not tell him what to do.
Themes
