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Chapter 36
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
Xan tells herself that Luna is safe at home until it feels true, and grudgingly accepts bugs from Antain. She thinks of dying and leaving Luna, and knows that if she were a woman now instead of a swallow, she’d sob. Antain looks at Xan with concern and admits that he’s never hurt anything before. Xan snuggles close to comfort him and Antain stops to build a fire and cook sausage. Xan can smell spices and love. Antain says that Ethyne made the sausage and Xan chirps to try to encourage him to keep speaking. She can sense a rattle in his chest, which she knows is the precursor to loss. He tells her that the Day of Sacrifice waits for no one, which confuses Xan. She pecks him.
When Xan continues to tell herself that Luna is safe at home, rather than out in the forest and creating scrying devices of her own, it shows how much Xan relies on altering her own sense of reality to make it through the world. By encouraging Antain to speak more about Ethyne and his love for her, Xan encourages Antain to do the exact opposite. By focusing on his love, which is true and unassailable, he can accept other truths and reevaluate the things that he believes aren’t true.
Themes
Antain talks about how beautiful Ethyne is and Xan looks into his heart. She sees that it’s not his scars that broke him; it’s the memory of a woman in rafters clutching a baby with a crescent moon birthmark. Antain says that there’s a witch in the woods who takes the Protectorate’s youngest baby every year. Xan is horrified that she didn’t see the connection before. Antain continues and says that his baby is slated for sacrifice, but it will surely kill Ethyne to lose their son. Xan wants to transform, comfort Antain, and tell him that the Star Children are happy—but that she made a mistake. Xan wonders how this started and then feels something predatory in her memory. Antain says that he’s not wicked, but because he loves his family, he will kill the Witch.
Xan’s memory of something predatory likely refers to Sister Ignatia, which suggests that Sister Ignatia is truly the culprit and caused all of this sorrow. When she finally puts it together that the abandoned babies are sacrificed to the Witch and that Luna was one of them, Xan is forced to reckon with the consequences of not being curious and trying to figure out where the babies came from. In this sense, Xan is complicit in the sadness and the control that Sister Ignatia has over the Protectorate.
Themes
