A Monster Calls Literary Analysis

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness is a Young Adult novel inspired by a Siobhan Dowd and illustrated by Jim Kay. In this book, a boy named Conor calls a monster to help him comprehend and deal with his feelings regarding his mother’s cancer and impending death. The monster, a creation of Conor’s imagination, helps him realize the differences between appearance and reality through the literary elements of the frame narrative, setting, and illustrations. The monster tells Conor stories; this storytelling establishes a frame narrative. A frame narrative is a literary technique in which a character tells a story within the main story. These stories serve to tell Conor to question the appearance of things to get to the reality of them. In the …show more content…
This is shown to be the opposite when she breaks the only item left whole in her living room after Conor has destroyed the rest of it. The end of the story shows readers, and Conor, how much his grandma genuinely cares for him. She has been frantic with worry because he has been missing for hours, so frantic that she hugs him. Prior to this, Conor was unable to see how she loves him. Their ways of showing love are the same, and that is difficult for them to reconcile. For example, Conor shows he loves his mother by taking care of her. He cooks and cleans, taking various burdens off of her shoulders. His grandma takes care of Conor and drives him 45 minutes each way to school, taking burdens off of Conor and his mother. These are also coping mechanisms for Conor and his grandma, which neither of them can comprehend in the other. For Conor, the appearance of his grandma’s strictness overshadows the reality of her love for him. That is not just the responsibility of Conor, his grandma never tells him outright that she loves him. People need to hear, not just be shown, that they are loved—especially children, and especially children experiencing difficult …show more content…
[The images mentioned are included at the end of this paper for reference.] Depending upon the situation, they show readers both. For example the image spread on pages 112 and 113 show the appearance of the second story the monster tells Conor. The monster has been showing Conor how he destroyed the parson’s home when he encourages Conor to join in on the destruction. The reality of the situation is that he has actually been destroying his grandmother’s living room. He has broken every object and almost all of the furniture. This is revealed in the image on page 114, where Conor stands in front of the wreckage that was once a pristine living