In its effort to help Conor heal, the monster outlines to Conor the paradoxical nature of Conor's feelings as he watches his mother succumb to cancer. Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary." The monster, p. "You wanted her to go at the same time you were desperate for me to save her. The response attests to how Conor does in fact need to heal in order to overcome the emotional repression that is making him angry and isolated, and preventing him from being able to grieve. The passage is significant because Conor's inability to name his mother's condition betrays his denial. In this passage, Conor insists he isn't the one in need of healing. The monster tells Conor it came not to heal his mother, but to heal Conor. Toward the end of the novel, Conor confronts the yew-tree monster about its failure to heal his mother. Because of course he had, of course he did, no matter how much he’d wanted to believe it wasn’t true, of course he knew. My mum’s the one who’s…" But he couldn’t say it. This passage is significant because Ness captures in a single line Conor and his mother's dynamic of insisting to each other that her treatments are going to make her better, when in fact they both suspect she is unlikely to survive. By referring to her cancer diagnosis as "a little talk," Conor's mother greatly understates the seriousness of the situation. This passage not only speaks to Conor's avoidant mindset, but to his mother's. Marl gives out the life writing assignment, Conor thinks about how the most important events of his life have all been unpleasant, and he would prefer to not write about them. The afternoon when his mother said they needed to have a little talk. The cat wandering off one day and never coming back. Nothing he wanted to write about, though. He could think of a couple of important things that had happened. In contrast, the monster he does meet is inconsequential, despite its displays of ferocity. In this passage, the narrator comments on how Conor isn't afraid because the monster he truly fears is the monster of his nightmare. In an ironic reversal of the reader's and the monster's expectations, Conor isn't afraid of the monster during their first encounter. Because this wasn’t the monster he was expecting. All he could feel, all he had felt since the monster revealed itself, was a growing disappointment. In fact, he found he wasn’t even frightened. However, Conor doesn't know that the monster is not there to defeat Conor's grandmother it is there to help him access the truth of his feelings.īut Conor didn’t run. This passage is significant because it shows how Conor, in the isolation his grief and anger induce, hopes the monster will support him. In this passage, the monster suggests that Conor believed the monster would help Conor by fighting his enemies. Later, Conor shyly admits that he thought the monster had come to help him. While arguing with his grandmother, Conor sees the monster outside the kitchen window. "You thought I might have come to topple your enemies. The feeling of being responsible for her life is akin to lifting a mountain-an impossible task. The passage is significant because it shows how Conor's dream exists as a hyperbolized, symbolic version of the responsibility he feels in his daily life as he tries to hold out hope for his mother to continue living. In this passage, the narrator describes the extreme sense of responsibility Conor feels when he enters the space of his nightmare.
The nightmare feeling was rising in him, turning everything around him to darkness, making everything seem heavy and impossible, like he’d been asked to lift a mountain with his bare hands and no one would let him leave until he did. The moral of the story is significant because the monster is trying to teach Conor that he himself is neither good nor bad for having contradictory feelings toward his mother's illness and his desire to see the end of his and her suffering. In this passage, the monster concludes that not all conflicts feature a good guy and a bad guy, and that the truth is that most people are neither good or bad, but are somewhere in-between. In its explanation of the first tale, the monster tells Conor that neither the queen nor the heir was a good person, but neither were they punished for their wickedness. Most people are somewhere in-between.” The monster, p.
0 kommentar(er)
