A Monster Calls

Conor’s father drops him back off at Grandma’s house, then explains that he will only be in England for a few more days. Conor asks why his father bothered to come at all, and his father tells him that he came “because [Conor’s] mum asked [him] to” (92). Conor pulls away from his father’s touch, and when his dad offers to come inside the house and keep him company, Conor replies that he’s “fine on [his] own” (92). Back in the house, Conor has a small tantrum and accidentally breaks part of his grandmother’s prize clock. He is horrified and finds that the hands stopped at 12:07pm. The monster appears in his grandmother’s sitting room, and calls Conor’s destruction “remarkably pitiful.” The monster says that its second tale will be about “a man who thought only of himself [...] And he gets punished very, very badly indeed” (98). Conor thinks of his father and agrees to listen.

The monster tells Conor a story about two men: a Parson and an Apothecary. The Apothecary was an ancient man, “dealing in the old ways of medicine” (103) with a bad temper who “was greedy and charged too much for his cures” (104). The Parson was a man of God who preached against the ways of the Apothecary. The Apothecary wanted to cut down the yew tree that stood on the parsonage grounds, because “The yew tree is the most important of all the healing trees” (105), but the Parson refused. The Parson’s two daughters got sick, and when no treatments would help them, he swallowed his pride and went to the Apothecary, offering him anything he wanted, including the yew tree. The Apothecary was shocked that the Parson “would give up everything [he] believed in” (107), and he turned the Parson away. The girls died, and the monster destroyed the house of the Parson.

Conor is shocked that the monster punished the Parson and not the Apothecary. The monster explains that the Parson “was willing to throw aside his every belief” (108) in times of hardship, and he says that the Parson should have let the Apothecary have the yew tree the first time he asked, because it would have saved countless people. The Apothecary “was greedy and rude and bitter, but he was still a healer” (109), whereas the Parson was a man of belief who threw away his belief when it inconvenienced him. As Conor and the monster watch the destruction of the Parson’s home, the monster asks if Conor wants to join in. Conor is overcome with rage and begins to help the monster destroy the Parson’s house, “disappearing into the frenzy of destruction” (111). When Conor is exhausted from the effort, he realizes that he is back in Grandma’s sitting room, and “he had destroyed almost every inch of it” (114).

Conor takes in the destruction of Grandma’s sitting room: furniture is “shattered into pieces beyond counting,” and wallpaper has been “ripped back in dirty, uneven strips” (115). The monster has disappeared, and Conor doesn’t believe that he could have done this much damage by himself, but “his fingernails [are] torn and ragged, aching from the labor” (115). He thinks about how no one will want “a boy who could do all this” to live in their house (116). He goes into shock as Grandma’s car pulls into the driveway. Grandma enters, sees the destruction of the sitting room, and goes into shock as well. She eventually screams and walks right past Conor to break the only thing Conor didn’t destroy: the display cabinet. She then goes to her bedroom. Conor tries to clean up the terrible mess and hears Grandma crying in her room late into the night.

The next morning, Conor’s father arrives to take Conor to school. His mother has “taken a turn” (123), and Grandma had to leave to talk to the doctors. When Conor tries to apologize for what happened in the sitting room, his father says that they are “going to pretend like it never happened” (124), because there are more important things happening with his mother. Conor realizes he will not be punished for what he did. At school, Conor begins to withdraw from others, but he waits for Harry and his friends to find him, and when he sees them coming towards him, “Conor [feels] weak with relief” (122). However, Harry doesn’t hit Conor. He asks if Conor wants him to beat him up. When Conor doesn’t respond, Harry walks away and leaves Conor alone, “Like he was completely invisible to the rest of the world” (126).