Monkey Beach: Chapter 3: In Search of the Elusive Sasquatch Summary & Analysis

Given the losses she’s already suffered, it makes sense for Lisa to assume that the ghostly Tab implies her cousin’s death. As such, Tab provides a gruesome and vivid warning about the dangers Lisa faces if she continues her life of drunken escapism. There’s a lot of danger in living on the edges of society, especially for Indigenous women, who (as Aunt Trudy has already pointed out) broader society seems to hold in little esteem or value.

It seems that the spirits sent the vision of Tab when Lisa was ready to hear its message. Lisa cautiously begins to explore what it might mean to take care of herself rather than to engage in self-destructive behaviors. Slowly, she begins to return to the land of the living, even though she knows that it will require her to reckon with her losses and her pain and to accept responsibility for using her life and her energies productively.

Lisa and Trudy both try to make a fresh start at this time. This suggests both the importance of the project—Lisa has so much more of her life ahead of her and does not want to waste as many years in pain and suffering as Trudy—and points towards the trauma that Trudy suffered during her own childhood, which reverberates well into her adult years. And despite her own troubles, Trudy welcomes Lisa with open arms, because a good family provides love and mutual support no matter what.

The message from the spirit world arrived just in time for Lisa, ensuring that she’s sober and ready to pick up the pieces of her life when Frank suddenly—as if by magic—appears in Vancouver. Their tense encounter at the bar points towards the strife between Josh and his nieces and nephews which the book has hinted at before, although the full outlines of it won’t become clear to Lisa for quite some time yet. Josh’s conversation with Lisa focuses readers’ attention on the violence and abuse carried out against Indigenous Peoples in the distant and recent past, from Trudy’s traumatic time at residential school to Cookie’s violent death. It also helps contextualize some of Mick’s sadness and aimlessness in life. While the book claims that Lisa needs to deal with her losses to grow up, it does not shy away from presenting losses and torments so horrible that they’re impossible to truly get beyond. Lisa needs to find a way to use her fighting spirit to survive in a world that can be impossibly cruel, for her survival in itself rebukes the racism and violence that has sought to oppress Indigenous Peoples.

Trudy must revisit the site of her trauma to access the rehabilitation care that might free her from the results of that trauma, suggesting rather pointedly that historical violence and trauma aren’t confined to the past. And these cycles of trauma have also claimed Pooch, whose suicide, the book implies, relates to the loss of his family and his safe home after his grandmother—his last remaining parent figure—died. Bereft of her support, he does not know how to go on.

The small plastic bag of clothes recalls the day that Lisa went into the woods after her rape and suggests that she’s at a similarly desperate moment now. It suggests the terrible state of her life, which her memories otherwise only sketch broadly. Frank’s death-message visitation from Pooch reminds Lisa of how thin the barrier between the land of the living and the land of the dead is, and although she doesn’t have access to her full power (bereft of the kind of training her medicine woman great-grandmother had), she does find herself in a position to help Frank out, since she’s more experienced with ghostly visitations.

The sasquatch sighting gives Lisa hope for the first time since Mick’s death and offers her a sign that she’s on the right path. Tellingly, she keeps the sighting secret—both, perhaps, because she fears Frank won’t believe her, and because the sasquatch connects her to her childhood and to her happy memories with her family.

The bear on Monkey Beach recalls the bear Lisa encountered when she went oolichan hunting with Mom and Mick many years before. It suggests the cycles of life and that, although Lisa leaves home and leaves her childhood, these places still exert a power and influence over her current life. The oddly human bear also sounds like a shapeshifter, thus evoking the magical and mythical and warning Lisa that she’s about to enter a place where the boundary between waking and spirit realms is especially thin.

The sasquatch forms such an elegant symbol for the possibility of magic in the book precisely because it’s just as impossible to deny its existence as it is to prove it. Those who believe and those who can see sasquatch cannot be convinced of its nonexistence. In a similar way, Lisa knows that her experiences with the spirit world, although inexplicable and mysterious, cannot be denied. The idea of the sasquatch suggests that there is more in the world than we can see with our eyes and our narrow human understanding. In this description, the sasquatches also become a sort of metaphor for the Indigenous Peoples of North America, who had a complex social structure and history of their own, but whom white settlers considered uncivilized, under-evolved savages. Their systematic efforts to destroy Indigenous cultures essentially cut off modern Indigenous people from their roots, rendering their pasts almost as mythical as sasquatch itself. 

Although she’s back in town, Lisa clearly doesn’t know how her family will react after her running away to Vancouver and she doubts their forgiveness, hanging with her old crowd instead of going home. Both the fact of Pooch’s suicide and Cheese’s insensitive greeting suggest that, although one cannot revisit or live in the past, its events continue to affect life long afterwards. 

But Lisa can’t escape her past any more than anyone else. She also discovers, to her shock, that she’s not the only member of the family to have suffered painful losses—although he doesn’t explain why (suggesting that he remains lost in his own grief), Jimmy’s swimming career has ended.

Although it’s clear that things have changed in the family dynamic since her departure, Mom and Dad and Jimmy welcome Lisa home more or less with open arms, showing their love for her and demonstrating the ways that a good family provides a safe and welcoming harbor from life’s storms. 

Tellingly, Lisa learns about Jimmy’s injury from Mom instead of her brother; although he downplays the loss, it clearly affects him—and the rest of the family—deeply. Like Lisa before him, however, Jimmy’s denial predisposes him to dangerous choices.

Lisa’s family teases her with their bets about her success, but it’s clear that they all want her to succeed even if they fear she might fail. But even if she does, their light attitudes suggest, they will continue to love and support her as she figures out how to make her way in the world. The birthday gifts show both their care and how Lisa (like everyone) maintains continuity with her past even as she grows up and life events change her. The Elvis clock recalls Mick (since Elvis was his favorite); the sasquatch mask recalls her happy childhood (and Mick again); the windchimes recall the tinkling and whistling sounds of ghosts in the wind.

In going back to school, Lisa learns to direct her energies towards a goal and discovers how much easier this makes her life. This doesn’t negate or deny the pain and trauma she’s suffered, but it does suggest that lashing out indiscriminately doesn’t help anything. In contrast, unable to deal with the loss of his swimming career, Jimmy loses his sense of purpose and begins to engage in the risky behaviors Lisa has recently abandoned.

Lisa, newly on the road to some sort of equilibrium, wants the same for her brother, so she tries to set him up with Karaoke in an attempt to shake him from his post-swimming funk. Karaoke and Lisa haven’t been close, even though they shared a lot of acquaintances, and Karaoke’s reports show how tied Lisa was—and still is—to her community. And in her drunkenness, Karaoke starts to say something unflattering about Josh, dropping more hints about his problematic role in his family.

Lisa has thus far struggled to accept the losses of her uncle and grandmother, yet her dream shows how the dead continue to contact and support the living. And calling Jimmy a pain in the ass—the literal translation of “mimayus”—points towards the importance of family; “Mimayus” was the nickname of Ma-ma-oo’s much-loved sister Eunice, too.

Lisa reclaims her role in the family by cooking a meal to share with its members—including Karaoke by extension. Despite the discomfort between her and Mom, it’s clear that Jimmy feels very serious about their relationship. Karaoke’s reminiscence suggests that the past doesn’t stay in the past, invoking the historic cycles of abuse and trauma that continue to affect Lisa’s family and friends in the present—even though it’s not yet clear how these cycles have touched Karaoke herself. 

Lisa connects with her past through the boat, on which she last fished for halibut with Ma-ma-oo and crab with Mick. The lessons she learned from her beloved family members continue to support her even after their deaths. And Uncle Geordie continues watching out for his grand-niece and trying to keep her out of trouble.

In this section of the book, Lisa’s asides and experiences focus more and more intensely on the water, which lurks as an ever-present and increasingly threatening source of spiritual power, as the waves in this snippet threaten to suck life out to sea.

The crows signify a change of luck or the possibility of a message from the spirit realm, although it’s not clear whether they bring good or ill tidings to Lisa. And she hears the voices of the spirit realm from the trees, promising her what she wants in exchange for a sacrifice.

The story of t’sonoqua contextualizes the voices from the trees and shows how myths and legends can teach important truths about the world. In this analysis, t’sonoqua represents the alluring but ultimately dangerous ways in which alcohol and partying distracted Lisa from the pain she felt over her losses and traumas. But the legend also offers a warning about the voices that Lisa hears coming from the trees. The spirit realm represents raw power that can be good or evil. Without the necessary training (which Lisa lacks, thanks to attempts to destroy Indigenous cultures), her gift remains too dangerous to use. This t’sonoqua may also insinuate that Karaoke becomes a danger to Jimmy, luring him in with her beauty but ultimately exposing him to danger.

Lisa left the village and ran away to Vancouver and only after this did she gain enough perspective on her life to start to deal with the losses and trauma she had suffered. She tries to do the same for Jimmy, but instead of letting him make his own journey of discovery, she tries to force the issue by kidnapping him and bringing him to Monkey Beach. This further cements the importance of that place as one where she and Jimmy have a shared history and suggests that by going back there to look for Jimmy, she’s really trying to access the past, when Jimmy was with her in the land of the living. 

Lisa models caring affection for Jimmy as she solicitously nurses him through sobering up on the beach. Thus it comes as a shock when he rejects her attempt to help him—or tries to. Breaking the boat serves to keep him on Monkey Beach long enough for him to sober up and think about his life at least a little bit, accomplishing Lisa’s goals. It seems that the spirit world might be on her side in this escapade.

Jimmy’s energetic but fruitless efforts to escape the beach metaphorically suggest his energetic but fruitless attempts to escape dealing with the pain and suffering he feels over the loss of his swimming career—and, by extension, Lisa’s fruitless efforts to escape her own trauma and suffering. This suggests that lashing out indiscriminately doesn’t solve the problem; a person can only claim their own power by dealing with their issues directly. At the end of the day, a person has no choice, really, but to deal with what life gives them, whether that’s a career-ending injury or a disgusting tin of Spam.

If Lisa feels disconnected from her cultural past because she has no one to teach her how to make use of her gift, Jimmy’s focus on swimming kept him even farther from the traditional knowledge and skills of his ancestors. He spent much of his childhood focused on his swimming career and didn’t enjoy the outdoors, while Lisa spent enough time with Mick and Ma-ma-oo to learn to care for herself. And as the siblings sit on Monkey Beach together, they both begin to come to terms with the ever-present reality of suffering and loss in human existence.

Both Jimmy and Lisa understand that loss and suffering are inevitable, although neither of them have yet figured out how to deal with this pain productively. They both have experienced denial and have lashed out indiscriminately in ways that haven’t relieved their suffering but intensified it. Yet, the book acknowledges that grieving represents hard and effortful work, work which still may fail to bear fruit—like Jimmy’s truncated swimming career. But the time away and in the spiritually connected place of Monkey Beach allows both Lisa and Jimmy to think about how to do this work.

Jimmy makes up for his lack of knowledge with enthusiasm that borders on impetuousness, in contrast to Lisa’s growing concern for preserving her life. The animals on the beach point towards its remoteness—Lisa and Jimmy are alone and isolated by miles and miles of sea channel and impenetrable woods, and no one truly knows who or what lurks there (remember the sasquatches reported to live above the beach). Yet they have each other to watch over and care for.

For many of the Indigenous Nations along the Pacific coast, orcas represent family, protection, and safe travels. The orcas that appear to Jimmy and Lisa on their trip home thus seem to be an auspicious sign, at least in the moment. Jimmy again demonstrates his fearlessness—or foolhardiness—by jumping in the water alongside them.

In swimming with the whales, Jimmy finally accesses some of the magic that exists in the world all around him, magic to which his sister Lisa has long been sensitive.

Jimmy doesn’t lash out at the world in the same way that Lisa did, but he also struggles to accept loss. Instead of acknowledging his pain, he buries it in denial, recasting his swimming career as a waste of his time instead of as his sole focus. Now he tries to transfer his attention to a new object—the scientific study of crows. But it’s important to remember that the crows, like many other beings tied to and from the spirit realm, give ambiguous messages.

Like her dream about Ma-ma-oo’s death, it’s unclear the extent to which this vision represents the truth of events as they occurred or just Lisa’s beliefs about them. In either case, the dream confirms for Lisa the truth of Ba-ba-oo’s alleged abuse. And it shows her that Ma-ma-oo herself struggled to know how to deal with suffering and death; these were lessons she had to learn through painful experience. The dream also points towards Lisa’s ongoing pain and subconscious desire to be reunited with Ma-ma-oo, even if it means her death. The water calls to her in alluring and dangerous ways—much like the t’sonoqua ogre she described in an earlier passage.

Once when they were younger, the little man warned Lisa about danger to Jimmy, and she watched him like a hawk for days. Now their situations swap, and he follows her as closely as she did him—at least until Karaoke returns and distracts him. Jimmy shows protectiveness and demonstrates the mutual love and support a family’s members should provide for each other. It also shows how far he's willing to go to protect the people he loves—including Karaoke, whom he now intends to marry.

Jimmy’s new plans look like they will launch him into the next, adult, phase of his life, while Lisa’s focus remains solidly on just finishing high school. It seems, at least in this moment, as if she’s about to become the focus of her parents’ concern again. Yet, her life should have taught her not to trust appearances—things are not always as good (or bad) as they seem. Jimmy’s newfound happiness and sense of purpose may be unwarranted.

This section interposes itself on the narrative flow, in which Lisa toggles between the recent history leading up to Jimmy’s disappearance and the moment in which she’s standing on Monkey Beach. It’s unclear whether it’s a memory or a vision, but given the flock of crows descending on Monkey Beach, it seems like a warning that she needs to be careful.

Lisa prominently described the t’sonoqua in this section of the book, strongly suggesting that the voices she hears from the trees are dangerous at best (malicious at worst). The sound of the crow reminds her of her mission here—to find Jimmy, who loves crows—and also offers her a warning, since the crows often indicate changes of luck. Still, despite these warnings, she presses ahead, intent on finding Jimmy if she can.

Lisa makes it clear that there’s a connection between Karaoke, Josh, and Jimmy that the family didn’t understand at first—in fact, given Lisa’s earlier hints, it’s clear that her parents still don’t know what she eventually pieces together. Although she hasn’t yet elaborated on the specifics, Jimmy’s grim attitude and Karaoke’s surprise at finding him gone fishing with Josh indicate that it’s not good.  Still, it’s clear that Jimmy acts out of his affection and care for Karaoke.

The crows go wild at Jimmy’s departure, strongly implying that nothing good will come of his trip. It’s as if they’re trying to offer him—or maybe Lisa—one final warning before it’s too late. Yet, he looks straight ahead and leaves without so much as a backwards glance.

In her ongoing attempts to support her brother (like a loving family member), Lisa stumbles on the truth: Josh has been molesting Karaoke, evidently for quite some time. When Jimmy thought she’d broken up with him, she’d instead gone to Vancouver to obtain an abortion. And the situation gets even more grim: although the book does not condone or excuse Josh’s actions, it does contextualize them with the revelation that he himself suffered sexual abuse at the hands of residential school staff. The abuses and trauma of one generation continue to reverberate into the next.

Despite the warnings, despite her intuition—combined with her knowledge of Josh’s vile actions and Jimmy’s thirst for revenge—Lisa makes a sacrifice and opens herself up to the power, but also the danger, of the spirit world. She tells readers that the final step in contacting the dead involves submitting to the power of the spirit world completely and without reservations. And then she does so herself, despite previous experiences—like her near-drowning earlier in the summer, after her dream about Ba-ba-oo’s death—which should have warned her of the danger.