Memory, Repression, and Trauma Theme Analysis

Monday’s Not Coming is told in three distinct timelines: “One Year Before the Before” takes place a year before Monday goes missing, “The Before” covers the year after Monday goes missing, and “The After” takes place two years after the police discover that Monday and August were murdered. However, this structure isn’t clear until the end of the book. As a result of the trauma of discovering her best friend was murdered, Claudia represses her memories of the discovery—and so she spends the two years after the discovery tirelessly trying to unravel the mystery of Monday’s disappearance all over again. Memory, the novel shows, is fragile and fleeting when it’s intertwined with trauma, as trauma can cause a person to misremember or repress their memories. But the novel also suggests that it’s only through remembering that a person can understand their trauma and ultimately heal from it.

The novel shows that traumatic experiences can cause a person to repress and misremember uncomfortable truths, even though doing so is ultimately unhelpful. For instance, after it’s revealed that Mrs. Charles murdered Monday and August, Claudia shares a secret with readers: on some level, she knew all along that Monday was dead—but she hoped that Monday had been murdered by a stranger, not by her mother, which is why she repressed the truth and kept searching for answers. It’s far more palatable for Claudia to simply forget that Mrs. Charles brutally murdered Monday and kept her body in the freezer for almost a year than it is to spend years searching for a different outcome. And Claudia has other reasons for refusing to accept the truth: accepting that Monday is gone means that Claudia would have to put Monday’s memory to rest, which Claudia can’t bear to do. Further, accepting Monday’s death would mean that Claudia would also have to accept that she’s on her own in life—a wildly uncomfortable prospect for her, given that Claudia relied on Monday for everything. Overwhelmingly, then, the novel suggests that Claudia buries the fact that Monday is dead in an attempt at self-preservation. The truth is far more difficult and uncomfortable to face than the prospect that Monday might still be out there, waiting for Claudia to rescue her.

However, Monday’s Not Coming makes the case that because Claudia represses that Monday’s disappearance has been solved, Claudia is unable to grow or form new social connections. Because the two years between the “After” timeline’s present and the discovery of Monday’s body effectively don’t exist in Claudia’s mind, she believes she’s still only 13 years old—and as a result, she consistently undervalues and underestimates herself. She doesn’t believe she’s old enough or good enough to dance in the upper-level dance class, for instance, and she thinks of herself as immature and inexperienced compared to her new dance friends, Megan, Shannon, and Kit Kat. In reality, Claudia is about the same age as these girls—but because she legitimately believes they’re years older, she blocks herself off from forming relationships with them. Though Claudia does this unwittingly and as a result of her trauma, her inability to connect with people her own age keeps her stuck eternally at age 13, in a sort of limbo where Monday will never be found and where Claudia will never be able to progress through the rest of her adolescence.

As Monday’s Not Coming comes to a close, it suggests that a person can only recover from past trauma if they can remember it—and if other people can help them remember. One of the reasons that Claudia isn’t able to remember that Monday’s body has already been discovered is because, for the last two years, Ma and Daddy have played along with Claudia’s insistence that Monday is still missing and never outright countered Claudia’s version of history. The novel suggests that they did this in the hope that Claudia would eventually remember that Monday’s body has been found all on her own, but they ultimately realize that hope isn’t enough to make Claudia remember.

Once Ma and Daddy realize that Claudia will need help to remember and heal, they take several important steps. First, Daddy gives Claudia an iPhone, which gives Claudia the ability to revisit the media coverage of Monday’s death two years ago. Having the proof right in front of her that Monday is indeed deceased and that the authorities have taken Monday’s murderer, Mrs. Charles, into custody decreases the likelihood that Claudia will forget again. Then, Ma also insists that the entire family seek therapy. While the novel doesn’t go into detail about what this entails, Claudia does note that her therapist suggests she do something to help her find closure. Claudia follows this advice by finding out, once and for all, what happened to Monday by listening to a podcast’s recording of Mrs. Charles’s confession. In her confession, Mrs. Charles calmly goes into graphic, shocking detail about how exactly she murdered Monday and Monday’s little brother, August. Though heartbreaking for Claudia to hear, Mrs. Charles’s chilling confession solves the mystery of exactly what happened to Monday, leaving no more mysteries for Claudia to solve. With this, Monday’s Not Coming highlights the importance of facing one’s trauma: only by facing it, and taking concrete steps to put it in the past, can a person recover and move forward.