Creating a Dichotomy
Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls deals with many intense themes in creative and exploratory ways. Two of these themes being faith and belief, but instead of just thinking about them in a straight forward way, Ness manages to create a dichotomy between the two. With the help of the yew tree monster and Conor’s mom and a lot of free indirect discourse, he first draws a line between these two crucial human ideas. Then, using the yew monster’s final lesson to Conor, he delves into what exactly this dichotomy is and just how different the ideas of faith and belief really are. And, by doing so, gives us a whole new way to look at the theme of faith.
The word faith is not used once in the entirety of Patrick Ness’s A Monster Calls. Nonetheless, faith is subtly threaded throughout the relationship between Conor and the yew monster. At the same time, the idea of belief is openly discussed and questioned almost constantly between him and his mom. This is where the dichotomy between faith and belief begins. The open and straight forward way Ness uses the theme of belief is representative of the ways in which he sees it as different from faith. Conor’s original disbelief in the monster, belief in his mother, and her belief that the doctors will save her all work together to prove that, in this story at least, belief only happens in the things people want to be true, not in what is actually true. And he contrasts faith as accepting what is actually true, no matter what that truth is.
The novel opens with Conor wondering whether his encounter with the yew monster was real or not. The question of if he can he believe in something that seems so real yet is, at the same time, so impossible is a big one. He tries multiple times to convince himself the monster was a dream. Telling himself things like, “Don’t be stupid. You’re too old for monsters” or rationalizing away the evidence of leaves in his room with ideas like, “They’d clearly blown in through his open window” (2, 15). These slips the narrator makes into Conor’s mind help take even the oldest of readers back to their childhood and all the irrational fears and ideas they had at that age. No one wants to believe there is actually a monster outside their window, but unfortunately for Conor, there is a lot of evidence suggesting that whether he believes it to be real or not, the monster is sticking around.
Eventually, Conor comes to accept that the yew monster isn’t going anywhere and reluctantly obliges to go along with his stories. This first turn towards faith happens after Conor again tries to convince himself he is dreaming. In response, the monster asks, “Who is to say that it is not everything else that is a dream?” (30). This rhetorical question is the first time that Conor allows himself to stop and take in the realness of it all. He puts the seeming impossibility of this monster aside and accepts what is right in front of him. And it is that acceptance that sets us down the road of this dichotomy Ness is creating.
Once Conor has accepted the monster’s existence, his faith in it really starts to develop. He reasons that the yew monster must have come for a reason, “you thought I might be here to help you… to topple your enemies” (50). When the monster speaks this admitted truth, we see Conor’s faith in it grow. We see the hope he had that this monster was going to bring him relief, and from that hope grew faith. Faith that he would no longer have to suffer with his grandma or deal with the grief.
From here, Conor’s faith develops even farther—all the way to the point of dependency. He goes from thinking the monster is there to help him to thinking he will save his mom’s life. Once again using free indirect discourse, we get a peek into Conor’s mind. Due to a mix of his mother’s talk about medicine and his own desperation, he has come to his point of highest faith in the monster. “The monster would heal her. Of course it would. Why else would it have come?” (143). Seeing his desperation through this unique third person perspective adds to the strength of Conor’s faith. Without this insight we would never be able know for sure just how fully it has actually developed. And not long after this moment it is proven again.
After being pushed to the edge by his bully, the monster uses Conor’s faith in it to teach a lesson. In his eyes, the monster is doing the damage to Harry, but in reality, it’s Conor’s doing. No one else can see the monster. Despite what everyone else has told him, he still has faith that the monster did it all. The narrator slips into his mind again as he flashes back to the fight with phrases like “when the monster gripped Harry’s shirt,” “When the monster struck a blow,” and “the blows from the monster were too strong” (154). At this point in the novel Conor has accepted the truth of the monster so deeply that he sees it as more trustworthy than the authority figures around him. This scene shows that whether the monster actually is real or not Conor now has undeniable faith in its existence.
Where Ness used Conor’s relationship with the yew monster to develop the definition of faith, he does the same with his relationship to his mom to give his definition of belief. To further the dichotomy, he has Conor go through a reverse of the processes he has with the monster. We see him have faith in his mom that, throughout the story, develops into a belief, to disbelief and finally a loss of both faith and belief.
One of Conor’s main problems throughout this story is his mother’s refusal to be honest with him. Instead of telling him her chances she continues to fan the flames of his faith that she will survive. Right away there is evidence of this when Conor tells his grandma “she’ll be better tomorrow” and then doesn’t understand what’s wrong when she has to go back to the hospital (41). This refusal to believe that his mom is dying presents as faith in her. Unfortunately, as we later learn it is a false faith that is heightened by his mother’s repeated beliefs.
When she first goes back to the hospital she tells him, “I’ve felt really bad and I’ve gone in and they’ve taken care of it. That’s what’ll happen this time” (77). This is a prime example of his mom spreading this false faith. Without knowing what’s going on she tells him how everything will be fine.
This happens again After telling him it’s not too late to save her. Her motherly instinct to protect her child leads her to tell him she “believe[s] every word [she] says” (129). Upon saying this, Conor reflects back on the monster’s latest story. The lesson there being “belief if half of healing” (129). This combination of wording turns out to be a crucial one. It gives Conor so much hope that his mother will be saved, so much belief in the world working out in his favor, that he isn’t able to face his truth. Her last-ditch effort to comfort her son creates a hollow belief. They both want it to be true, they both want to believe she will survive. But wanting something doesn’t make it true and so that hollow belief is all they have.
When the medicine fails to save his mom, and the monster reveals he isn’t there to save her, Conor’s last shred of faith in his mom’s survival dissipates. In his anger he shouts, “You said. You believed it would work” (166). With these two sentences, we can see just how badly he wanted to believe right along with his mom. Everyone wanted it to be true and to be able to believe along with them. But then his mom reveals that she was “believing it so [he] would” (166). She knew she was using this belief to avoid the truth, not just for herself but for her son to.
After the monster makes Conor come clean, he thinks it is his fault that his mother is dying. He believed he had the power to save her but failed to do so. And it is the monster’s purpose for coming that simultaneously proves Conor wrong and supports Ness’s definition of belief. He tells him that what Conor believes “is not the truth at all” (190). This powerful example of how believing something doesn’t mean it is true perfectly correlates with the idea that belief is just what people would like to be true. Conor wanted to be able to help his mom and so he believed he could. When he fails to do so the monster’s lesson takes the blame off his shoulders with the simple fact that what you believe isn’t necessarily true.
Finally, after the fourth story Conor tells his truth. That truth being that he never truly even believed his mom would get better. Full of shame he tells the monster, “she said she was getting better… And I believed her. Except I didn’t” (189). This admission of never fully believing that she would survive is the final relinquishing of any truth, faith, or belief that he ever had, no matter how small, that his mom would survive. But for our purposes here, it is one last bit of evidence of Ness’s dichotomy between faith and belief. He refused to accept the truth and so did not have faith and at the same time he knew that she wouldn’t live. But he desperately wanted her to. So he believed as much as he could even though he knew the truth deep down.
Ness managed to mirror the themes of faith and belief through Conor’s relationships with two different people simultaneously. The result of this weaving led to his dichotomy of the two themes. Faith being the acceptance of truth and belief being what people want to be the truth. All the while, never actually talking about faith, or any spirituality for that matter. While the monster could be seen as a god-like figure, Ness leaves the metaphor open-ended, allowing the reader to view the idea faith in a new way. In A Monster Calls, the theme of faith is something entirely separate from religion. Faith is truth, and acceptance, and a way to cope with the impossible and the painful.
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