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Chapter 31
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
Luna wakes up well after sunrise. The crow caws its relief that she’s alive as Luna checks her injuries and realizes that she’s on a bloom of enormous mushrooms. Luna fetches her map and sees that there’s a spot marked “mushrooms.” The crow pleads with her to turn back, but Luna refuses. She walks on and feels herself healing. She doesn’t look back to see that where she steps, flowers bloom.
The blooming flowers are evidence of Luna’s growing magic, while not looking back shows that Luna no longer considers the possibility that her steps should grow flowers as she did when she was a child. She has, in effect, learned to ignore things, just like Xan.
Themes
Meanwhile, Xan, as a swallow, stumbles from tree to tree. She can’t remember what she’s supposed to be doing and if she’s always been a swallow. She thinks that she’s dying, but can’t remember her life. Xan hears a voice asking Fyrian to be quiet and a discussion of the possibility that someone told Fyrian untrue things about dragon physiology. Fyrian is shocked; he believes that nobody has ever lied to him. Xan recognizes the voices and knows the name “Xan” when the monster says it. Fyrian tells Glerk about the house he saw and Glerk explains that it’s probably a village, abandoned after the last eruption. Glerk says that Xan has been here without Luna. Xan suddenly knows who she is and races toward the clearing to save the baby.
In this moment, the novel shows clearly that loving relationships between family, chosen and otherwise, help a person figure out who they are—Xan is able to remember that she’s a witch and has a baby to save when she remembers who Glerk and Fyrian are. Glerk’s discussion with Fyrian, meanwhile, suggests that Fyrian is finally getting the truth about his size and will possibly learn that Xan has been lying to him. Through this, Fyrian will be able to grow up and find his place in the family as an adult dragon.
Themes
The crow is beside himself with worry as Luna picks her way through a river of embers. He won’t tell her what he sees and Luna tries to figure out how she made her map. The crow says that something is coming as Luna reaches an abandoned village and approaches the central building. The stones are engraved with dragons, people writing, and people with crescent moon birthmarks on their foreheads. There are other carvings of the mountain erupting and a dragon diving into it. Luna looks up as the crow flies into her arms, panicked, and thousands of paper birds descend. Luna understands that this is magic.
Once again, connecting Luna’s growing understanding of magic with the paper birds that came from her mother shows that discovering one’s identity, one’s past, and one’s future are all connected to figuring out who a person’s family is. As a symbol of hope, the paper birds also suggest that this will be a happier and more enlightening moment than the crow’s behavior might otherwise suggest.
Themes
