Previous
100 Years
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 drops Conor off at his home and then returns to the hospital. Conor realizes, looking at the place he has lived his entire life, that it will probably never be his home again. He hops the fence in his backyard and climbs up the hill to the graveyard behind the church. He kicks the yew tree several times, yelling at the monster to “WAKE UP.”
Conor is finally coming to accept that changes (and his mother’s death) are imminent, inherent in the acknowledgement that he will probably never live in his home again.
Themes
The monster wakes, stepping out of the way of Conor’s kicks. Conor asks the monster why the yew tree didn’t heal his mother. He asks what the use of the monster is if it can’t heal his mother. The monster “pluck[s] [Conor] into the air,” saying that it did not come to heal his mother; it came to heal him.
Conor’s confrontation with the monster again demonstrates his misplaced pain. Just like Lily, his grandmother, his father, and Harry, Conor looks to the monster as someone that he can blame for what is happening to his mother—even though the monster was never the cause of nor the cure for his mother’s illness.
Themes
Conor starts to protest that he doesn’t need healing, but he can’t finish his sentence. He is “crying furiously,” and knows that he still can’t admit that his mother is dying—even though he knew all along that it would happen and denied it. The monster says that it is time for the fourth tale, and conjures a mist around them.
Conor finally begins to realize the damage that all of this pent-up anger and grief has had on him. Even though he has known for a long time that his mother is going to die, it was still too painful to admit that to himself. Yet because he avoided confronting his feelings, they have only grown in intensity.
Themes
