a monster calls analysis essay

A Monster Calls Essay

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W hy's T his F unny?

A Monster Calls

67 pages • 2 hours read

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-6

Chapters 7-12

Chapters 13-18

Chapters 19-26

Chapters 27-32

Character Analysis

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Important Quotes

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Summary and Study Guide

A Monster Calls (2011) was written by Patrick Ness, illustrated by Jim Kay, and the original idea for the novel is credited to the late Siobhan Dowd. Ness wrote the novel in Dowd’s memory after she passed away in 2007 from breast cancer. Set in present-day England, A Monster Calls is a young adult fantasy novel that explores topics of terminal illness, grief, death, anger, and the grieving process through the eyes of a child; it does so by using elements from English history and mythology. A Monster Calls won the Carnegie Medal, the United Kingdom’s most prestigious award for children’s literature, and the Greenway Medal for illustration in 2012; it was the first book ever to win both awards . A Monster Calls was adapted into a 2016 movie featuring Liam Neeson as the Monster and was adapted for the stage in 2019. Ness is also the author of several novels for both adults and young readers, including the award-winning Chaos Walking series. This guide references the Candlewick Press paperback edition of A Monster Calls .

Plot Summary

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In present-day England, Conor O’Malley wakes up from his usual nightmare to hear someone calling his name. To his amazement, the yew tree across from his house transforms into a humanoid monster and eats him alive. The next morning, Conor finds no evidence of the monster’s visit except for a layer of yew tree leaves on the floor of his bedroom.

Conor’s mother is sick and undergoing treatments for an unnamed illness, and Conor keeps the household running when his mum is too tired. At school, Conor is isolated from the other students, who know about his mother’s illness. He is bullied by a boy named Harry, and his only friend is Lily, whom he is not speaking to because she told the whole school about his mum’s illness.

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Conor has strained relationships with the other adults in his life. His parents are divorced and his dad lives in America, and Conor does not get along with his fussy grandmother. Except for his mother, Conor feels very alone, and he has a dark secret that he won’t tell even her: the truth of what happens in his nightmare every night.

The monster visits Conor regularly and says it will tell him three stories. After, Conor must tell the monster a fourth story—the truth of what happens in his nightmare. Despite Conor’s protestations, the monster begins to tell his tales.

In the first tale, the monster talks about an ancient kingdom, a wicked queen, and a prince who loved a farmer’s daughter. To Conor’s shock and indignation, the story has an unexpected twist: the prince was the villain, and the wicked queen wasn’t wicked after all.

In the next tale, the monster tells a story of two men, a Parson and an Apothecary. Although the monster leads Conor to believe that the Parson was the good man and the Apothecary was evil, once again, the monster’s story has a twist. The monster invites Conor to help him destroy the evil Parson’s house, and when Conor looks around, he discovers that he has actually destroyed his grandmother’s sitting room.

Between the stories, Conor’s life changes rapidly. His mother becomes so sick that she must be admitted to the hospital for additional treatments, and Conor must go stay with his grandmother. Conor wants to go stay with his dad in America, but his father won’t allow it. Conor feels powerless, frightened, and angry that everyone around him seems to be anticipating his mother’s death and giving up on her.

At school, Conor attacks the bully Harry while the monster tells the third tale about a man who, like Conor, felt invisible and decided to make people see him. Conor learns that his mother is not responding to any more treatments and is in her final stages of dying. He goes to see the monster, who forces him to tell his nightmare: Conor dreams of letting his mother go and surrendering her to the disease. He is wracked with guilt, but the monster comforts him and explains that there is nothing wrong with wishing for an end to pain.

Conor makes it back to the hospital in time to hold his mother’s hand as she passes away. He can finally admit that he wants her suffering to stop, but he also loves her and is heartbroken to see her go. In the end, he holds on to his mother and lets her go at the same time.

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A Monster Calls Literary Analysis

Everyone encounters some kind of loss at some point in their lives. Patrick Ness´s novel, A Monster Calls, depicts how Conor, a 13-year-old boy, deals with the departure of his family and friends. Because of his mumś illness, Conor isolates himself and loses his identity in school and home.  In this novel, the protagonist, Conor O’Malley, experiences loss in many ways.

At the beginning of the book, the theme of loss is expressed through Conor losing his best friend, Lily.  Even though they are not friends anymore, Lily still endeavors to protect Conor from Harry and his other bullies. Reflecting on their relationship, Conor felt enraged that she told his secret about his mumś illness. After she stands up to his bullies to help him, she continues to try to talk to Conor. ¨We used to be friends,’ Lily called after him. ‘Used to be,’ Conor said without turning around” (26).  This shows that Conor is unable to forgive her and he doesn’t want to repair their relationship. He felt betrayed because friends are supposed to keep secrets and if he forgives her for this, he would be admitting his truth and accepting the reality that his mum is dying. The loss of his best friend significantly impacted his experiences at school.

Additionally, the theme of loss is shown through the relationship with the yew tree monster. At the beginning of the story, Conor was in denial about his mum’s illness and called the yew tree monster to help him to heal. The monster taught Conor life lessons through stories. He taught Conor to admit his truth and accept his destiny. By the end of the story, Conor becomes close friends with the monster. He has helped Conor to confront his fears and admit that he wanted the waiting over. It was too painful to watch his mum suffer, but admitting this would turn his nightmare into a reality that he did not want. This would mean that he would have to deal with another loss. He knows he cannot do this alone and asks the monster to be there with him to see his mum for the final time in the hospital. “‘Yes,’ the monster said. It will be the final steps of my walking’” (193). This illustrates that the monster will be with him; however, it also shows that Conor will also be losing the monster. Conor has learned to accept his loss, which why he loses the monster.  Conor has developed a close relationship with the monster. Conor wonders how he will cope without the monster. The monster is like a friend to Conor, which is why he is upset at the monster for leaving him.

At the end of the book, the theme of loss is expressed through Conor letting go of his mum. Conor has a very close relationship with her. She is suffering from cancer and Conor is not ready to lose her.  In her final moments, the mum says, “‘I wish I had a hundred years’, she said very quietly. ‘A hundred years I could give to you” (168). This demonstrates that Conor’s mum will leave him, and there is nothing he can do about it.  He loves his mum very much and he does not want to let go of her. Conor eventually accepts his destiny and realizes that all stories don’t have happy endings.  However, Conor had hoped that the yew tree could cure his mum’s health condition, but that does not happen. The yew tree monster assists Conor instead. Conor has difficulty dealing with the loss of his mum.

A loss is a part of life that is not easy to acknowledge. Thirteen- year- old,  Conor O'Malley, was forced to accept the fact that loss is a part of life and he needed to face his truth. Conor had to face his emotions and figure out how to move on after losing his mum, the yew tree monster, and his best friend, Lily.  By the end of the book, Conor is capable of accepting his loss. Conor now knows that destiny is destiny, and it cannot be changed.

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness was a portion of my English course in the second marking period of my seventh grade year. I wrote this essay for my teacher. I scored an exemplary grade on this particular assignment. 

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A Monster Calls

Patrick ness.

Death, Denial, and Acceptance

In A Monster Calls , thirteen-year-old Conor lives in an English town with his mother , who is implied to be battling cancer. Over the course of the book, Conor’s mother grows more and more ill as multiple treatments fail her, and it’s implied that she passes away just after the novel’s conclusion. At the beginning of the book, Conor has a difficult time coming to terms with the very real possibility that his mother…

Storytelling

The titular monster in A Monster Calls comes to Conor with a clear purpose: to tell him three stories, after which Conor will tell the monster one story of his own. Each of the stories that the monster relays bears similarities with Conor’s life, and because of this he starts to expect that there is a clear-cut moral lesson to be learned at the end of each one. But the stories that appear within the…

One of Conor ’s primary struggles in the story is his isolation as a result of his mother ’s cancer diagnosis. When Conor’s mother is diagnosed, she tells the mother of a friend of his, Lily , and Lily subsequently tells a few friends of hers. This quickly results in the entire school knowing that Conor’s mother is battling cancer, and immediately they begin to treat Conor differently. Conor’s friends and classmates begin to leave…

Family and Growing Up

Yet another difficult aspect of Conor ’s story can be found in the way that he is forced to grow up far sooner than he would have if his mother had not gotten sick. Conor’s parents are divorced, and his father lives in America with his new family. Thus, because it’s only Conor and his mother in their household, thirteen-year-old Conor is forced to take on a lot of responsibility when his mother is diagnosed…

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A Monster Calls

By patrick ness, a monster calls summary and analysis of a monster calls – grandma.

Written from the perspective of a third-person limited omniscient narrator, A Monster Calls opens with a monster visiting thirteen-year-old Conor O’Malley, the novel’s protagonist, at seven minutes past midnight on a Sunday night in October. Conor is awake because he has just had a recurring nightmare that features hands slipping from his grasp. He believes he cannot tell anyone about the nightmare, particularly his parents or grandmother. He wishes the nightmare would go away. Conor feels a rush of panic when the monster calls his name. He wonders if his father has made a surprise trip home from America. Out of his bedroom window he sees the moonlit church tower and graveyard. An ancient yew tree grows from the center of the graveyard. A cloud covers the moon.

A moment later, the moon shines on the yew tree again, but it is now in his yard. The upper branches gather into a great and terrible face. With creaking and groaning sounds the rest of the branches take the form of a humanoid shape. The thin leaves weave together into a furry green skin which moves as though the monster is breathing. The monster places its hands on either side of Conor’s window and leans close until its face fills the window frame. In its whooshing breath, the monster says it has come to get Conor. Conor isn’t afraid, because it isn’t the monster he expected. He tells the monster to come and get him then. The monster roars and smashes the house. It picks Conor up and asks if Conor really isn’t afraid. Conor confirms that he isn’t afraid—at least not of this monster. The monster swallows Conor whole.

Conor enters the kitchen while his mother is still in bed and disposes of a plastic bag in the larger garbage can, covering it with other trash so the bag wouldn’t be obvious. He prepares his own breakfast, as he has grown used to doing. As he eats, Conor considers the yew tree outside and assumes the encounter with the monster had been a dream. However, his bedroom floor had been covered in leaves, which he’d disposed of in the plastic bag, assuming the leaves had blown in the open window. Conor’s mother wakes up and thanks him for tidying the kitchen and taking out the trash. Conor notices she isn’t wearing the scarf she uses to cover her bald head, which looks so fragile it hurts his stomach to see it. She informs him that his grandmother is coming to stay in order to help out with things during Conor’s mother’s new round of treatments. Conor is resistant because he has to give up his room and sleep on the settee (i.e. sofa) when she stays. He remembers the bag of leaves and thinks maybe it’s not the worst thing to have her stay in his room.

At school, Conor gets up with blood in his mouth, having bitten his lip when he hit the ground. Harry , Anton and Sully laugh at him. Harry tells him to watch the steps, saying he might fall. The narrator comments that Harry used to be the Blond Wonder Child, and was always the teacher’s pet. But in the past year, since the nightmares started, Harry began picking on Conor, tripping Conor every morning as he came into the school grounds. Today, Lily Andrews tells the boys to leave Conor alone. Harry says that Conor is bleeding. Sully says he’ll have to get his “baldy mother” to kiss it better. Lily pushes Sully into a shrubbery. Miss Kwan , the students’ Head of Year, witnesses the push and scolds Lily. Lily says the boys were making fun of Conor’s mum, but when Miss Kwan asks Conor if this is true, he says it isn’t; he says he fell and the boys were helping him up. Lily’s face shows hurt and surprise as Miss Kwan pulls her away. Harry holds out Conor’s rucksack to him and says, “Well done, O’Malley.”

After school, Conor walks home with a frown. He dreads having to complete Mrs. Marl ’s “life writing” assignment, which requires Conor to write about important events in his life. Conor doesn’t want to write about the events he remembers: his father leaving, his cat disappearing, the afternoon his mother told him they needed to have a little talk. Lily catches up to Conor and asks why he let her get into trouble. He gets angry at her for having intervened, claiming he was fine. He says that it wasn’t his fault she got detention—it was hers. He storms off and she shouts that they used to be friends.

The narrator comments that Lily’s and Conor’s mothers were friends before the children were born. Things changed between Conor and Lily after the news about Conor’s mother. Conor will never forgive her for having let the bad news spread to everyone at school. Near his house, Conor walks by the yew tree, which reaches out its arms and says Conor’s name. He steps back so fast he nearly falls. When he looks up, it is just a tree again.

Conor's mother falls asleep watching EastEnders, a British soap opera. The phone rings and Conor lets it go to voicemail when he sees it is Lily’s mother’s calling. While in bed he hears his mother vomiting in the bathroom. He asks if she needs help but she says the treatments mean it is something she is used to by now. At 12:07, Conor looks out his window to see the monster looking in. Conor asks what it wants and the monster says it is not what the monster wants from Conor, but what Conor wants from the monster. Conor goes to the yard and tells himself it is just a dream. He notices he feels no terror though, unlike the other nightmare. The monster says it has had many names over time: Herne the Hunter, Cernunnos, the eternal Green Man. The monster lifts Conor up and says it is everything untamed and untameable.

The monster says it will visit on further nights to tell Conor three tales from when it walked before; Conor will deliver the fourth story, and it will be Conor’s truth. The monster says the truth Conor hides is the thing of which Conor is most afraid. Conor realizes the monster is referring to telling the truth of his nightmare, which he refuses ever to do. The monster threatens to eat Conor alive if he doesn’t tell the truth of his story. After the monster opens its mouth terrifyingly wide, Conor wakes up in bed. He switches on the lamp and sees his floor is covered in poisonous red yew tree berries which have somehow come in through a locked window.

Grandma arrives and asks Conor if he has been a good boy, pinching his cheeks hard. She slaps him on the cheeks and tells him to put the kettle on. She turns to her daughter and asks what they’re going to do with her. The narrator comments that Conor’s grandma is abnormal: she wears pantsuits, dyes her hair in order not to show any grey, and employs a cleaner. She asks about Conor’s school and then suggests he should attend a private school. Conor disapproves of her snobbery.

After eating Chinese takeaway for dinner, Conor is stuffing the foil packets into the trash can when Grandma says she isn’t Conor’s enemy; she is here to help his mother. She wants to talk about what’s going to happen, but Conor angrily tells her his mother will be better tomorrow, because she is always sick after treatments. He sees the monster outside the kitchen window. Grandma says she won’t be better, she’ll only seem better. Grandma says Conor’s mother needs to talk with him about him coming to live with Grandma. The room seems to go dark. Conor says he’ll never live with her. She says she’s sorry, but he is. She says it is important for him to know he has a loving home to go to when this is all over. Their conversation is interrupted when they hear Conor’s mother coughing in the living room. Grandma rushes in to rub Conor’s mother’s back as she throws up into a bucket. Grandma looks at Conor with a hard, unreadable expression.

In the opening chapters of A Monster Calls , Ness establishes the novel’s premise: Conor O’Malley, a thirteen-year-old boy whose mother is battling cancer, is haunted by a nightmare in which something happens that is so troubling he believes he can never let anyone know the dream’s content. In this troubled state, Conor is visited by a monster who transforms from an ancient yew tree planted in the neighboring church’s graveyard.

While the monster’s intimidating presence ought to terrify the young boy, in an instance of situational irony Conor is indifferent to the monster because it is not the monster from his nightmare. Although Conor’s first interaction with the monster ends much in the way his nightmare ends, Conor wakes up to discover his floor is covered in leaves. With this physical evidence, Conor isn’t able to dismiss the visitation as a nightmare. Conor reacts by hiding the leaves in the trash—a symbol for how the monster’s wisdom will stay with Conor in his waking life even as he tries to ignore what the monster tries to impart.

The opening chapters also establish Conor’s isolated life at school. After the news of his mother’s diagnosis circulated, Conor was unable to feel comfortable around people who didn’t know how to behave in his presence. In Conor’s alienated state, the only real attention he receives is from the playground bullies Harry, Sully, and Anton, who assault him every morning on his way into the school grounds. While Lily steps in to defend him, Conor resists her assistance. In an instance of situational irony, Conor lets Lily get in trouble instead of the students who harass him. His animosity toward Lily is explained when the narrator comments on how Conor still holds Lily responsible for having told everyone at school about his dying mother.

During the monster’s second visit, the monster says it has come to tell Conor three tales, after which Conor must tell the truth of his nightmare. Conor resists accepting the monster’s premise, but over time the monster will lead Conor to stop denying the truth of his nightmare and his mother’s cancer.

In addition to the antagonists of Harry, Lily, Miss Kwan, and the monster, Ness introduces in the opening chapters the antagonizing figure of Conor’s grandmother . Conor is quick to anger in her presence, in large part because she attempts to discuss in realistic terms what life will be like after Conor’s mother dies. Because Conor believes it is his responsibility to hold out hope for his mother’s survival, he is unable to engage in conversations that would require accepting her eventual death. He uses anger as a means of signaling to his grandmother that he is unwilling to discuss his mother’s death. His grandmother is also feeling anger as a result of the grieving process, and so she responds sternly that he will come to live with her. Their argument is interrupted by the sound of Conor’s mother coughing and vomiting in the sitting room, suggesting that as unpleasant as his grandmother’s perspective may be, she is right to be pessimistic.

A Monster Calls Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for A Monster Calls is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

What is an example of personification from a monster calls

"And we hear wood groaning, “. . . like the hungry stomach of the world, growling for a meal.”

how does connor change 'throughout a monster calls'?

I can't write an essay for you but can give a general response. Conor is the novel's protagonist and point-of-view character. At thirteen, Conor is haunted by a dream in which his terminally ill mother's hands slip from his grasp. He is also the...

Study Guide for A Monster Calls

A Monster Calls study guide contains a biography of Patrick Ness, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About A Monster Calls
• A Monster Calls Summary
• Character List

Lesson Plan for A Monster Calls

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to A Monster Calls
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• A Monster Calls Bibliography