Monster Calls

Death is an inevitable concept that will never die out. How one chooses to cope with it shows what they are like as a person. The fictional work, A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness, tells the tale of a young boy named Conor. He is visited by a monster who is the yew tree in his own background. Throughout the story, readers find out that Conor’s mother has a terminal illness, assumed to be cancer, and Conor imposes the blame on himself. However, it is revealed that the monster had come to try to get Conor to believe that he is not guilty and to blame for his mother’s illness. Through the symbolic meaning of the monster, Patrick Ness shows his philosophical message that in order to grow and change as a person, acceptance is key. There are some …show more content…
The three stories that the monster told were to help Conor come to terms with his true feelings and to show him to look in different perspectives. The first story was portraying his pent-up anger at his grandmother and the second was Conor acting upon those negative emotions. In those stories, the endings were far from what Conor had expected. He did not look at the perspectives of the other characters, but rather only of the main character. This reflected Conor’s own life. He focused on himself and did not understand the intent of the people who were trying to help him. The third story reflected his acceptance of not being looked down upon as the boy with a sick mother any longer. Conor desired punishment for all that he did, but all he got was more unfavorable attention, except from Lily. However, he accepted the fact that this was his life. At last, when Conor told the fourth story, and his own, he came to terms with his feelings about his mother and the impact of her illness on him. His thoughts of wanting his mother filled him with guilt and weighed him down. The monster said otherwise and told him that “‘it does not matter what you think, because your mind will contradict itself a hundred times [...] your mind will punish you for believing both’” (191). The monster did not want Conor to ignore what was happening, but rather accept what …show more content…
In the first paragraph, the yew tree was discussed and how it stood for death/afterlife, transformation, and rebirth. Those three interpretations could stand for Conor’s mother need to pass on and for Conor to let her go, the transformation of Conor’s mentality from a naive young boy to a older and more mature boy, and the “rebirth” of Conor. Conor needed to accept the reality of his mother’s fate and his own. He cannot change the outcome to what he desires, so he must accept the consequences and learn from them. After the monster got Conor to admit his feelings that had been locked up inside of him, he changed as a person, thus his “rebirth”. Conor had become a more understanding individual and matured. The second paragraph showed how Conor expressed himself rather than concealing it all and began to see situations in a different light. Conor stopped being one-sided and began to see all perspectives. He began to understand that his thoughts did not reflect what he desired to happen, unless he acted upon them. He accepted that part of him and all the guilt that had built up began to wither away. The third paragraph explained how the monster himself was created in order to teach Conor about acceptance. At first, Conor would not and could not let go of his mother and refused to believe that she would die, even though in the