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Chapter 11
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Girl Who Drank the Moon, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family and Love
Storytelling, Censorship, and Control
Memory, Forgetting, and the Future
Sorrow vs. Hope
Summary
Analysis
The parent assures the child that the Witch doesn’t live in the Bog—the Bog is entirely good, and with the Witch there it wouldn’t be good, and people would’ve seen her. The parent insists that the Bog would cough the Witch out. The parent agrees to tell the child the story of how the world arose. In the beginning, there was only the Bog. The Bog, however, was lonely and wanted to see, walk, and sing. So it created a Beast and loved the Beast. The Beast wanted words to talk about how he felt, so there were words. With the Beast’s words, the sun, the sky, and the forests were born. The parent says that this is why the Bog loves everyone, and why it’s ridiculous to suggest that the Witch lives in the Bog.
The Beast is, presumably, Glerk, since he previously told Fyrian that he’s the Poet and the Bog all in one. This makes it clear that Glerk isn’t just Xan’s beloved swamp monster; he has a life and an identity outside of this small family that he’s built for himself over the last 500 years. With this, the novel shows that stories can control (as well as simply alter) how listeners think of different characters. Hearing this version of the story makes it seem as though Glerk wouldn’t ever live with Xan—when in fact, he does happily live with her.
Themes
