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Life Writing
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
That evening, Conor’s mother falls asleep five minutes into watching TV, exhausted from cooking frozen lasagna for dinner. Conor spreads a duvet over her and does the dishes. He then does some of his school work (though he stops before doing the Life Writing assignment) plays around on the internet, brushes his teeth, and puts himself to bed.
Conor’s evening routine serves as a bookend to his morning routine in the chapter entitled “Breakfast.” Just as in that chapter, Conor takes on a lot of responsibility for himself and his mother. This again demonstrates some of the various ways in which Conor has had to prematurely grow up and become far more mature than his other thirteen-year-old peers.
Themes
Just after Conor turns the light out, his mother “very apologetically—and very groggily—come[s] in to kiss him good night.” A few minutes later, Conor hears his mother vomiting in the bathroom. He asks if she needs help, but she says no, and adds that she’s used to it by now. He realizes that he’s pretty used to it as well.
Conor’s descriptions imply that a nauseating new normal has been established in his life, which is why he is so desperate to avoid any kind of further change. His mother’s treatment schedule has become routine, but the book implies that his larger unspoken fear is that it might get worse—an idea he refuses to accept.
Themes
After a while, the vomiting stops, but Conor lies awake for two hours. He watches the clock tick to 12:07 a.m., gets up, and goes over to the window. The monster is waiting there, and tells him to come outside. Once Conor comes out to his backyard, he asks what the monster is. The monster’s eyes widen and it grows taller, a wind whipping up as it spreads its arms. “I am Herne the Hunter! I am Cernunnos! I am the eternal Green Man!” it roars. “I am everything untamed and untameable!” it continues. “I am this wild earth, come for you.”
Herne the Hunter, Cernunnos, and the Green Man are all variations of a pagan Horned God that is associated with the life cycle, nature, and wilderness. As the novel goes on, Conor begins to suspect that the monster might be there to help his mother live; given the nature of the monster’s many names, this expectation makes a lot of sense.
Themes
The monster lifts Conor up, who asks what the monster wants from him, dreading the answer. The monster says that it will come to Conor again, and will tell him three stories from when the monster “walked before.” Conor is a bit disappointed, wondering how that’s supposed to scare him. “Stories are the wildest things of all,” the monster replies.
Conor displays his early skepticism that stories are relevant to him or of any value. The monster’s comment that “[s]tories are the wildest things of all” foreshadows the way that the monster’s stories will unleash Conor’s own anger over his mother’s illness, but also how ignoring the truth can be incredibly harmful and scary.
Themes
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The monster then says that Conor will tell a fourth story, that the story will be his truth—the one that Conor “hides,” and that he is “most afraid of.” Conor is actually afraid, and thinks to himself that there is no way he is going to reveal “what happened in the real nightmare.” Conor asks what will happen if he does not tell the fourth story. The monster says that it will eat him alive, opening its mouth wide. Conor sits up in bed with a start, realizing that it must have been a dream. He goes to get himself a drink of water when he feels something squish under his foot: his floor is covered in poisonous yew tree berries.
Conor’s first instance of real denial is on display here. He knows what is in the real nightmare—later revealed to center around the idea that he wishes his mother’s suffering would end, even if it means her death—but he can’t bear the thought of revealing it because of his intense guilt. Yet this denial only prolongs the pain and suffering that he is experiencing.
Themes
