and beating up Harry), but simultaneously imparting wisdom about the 'whats' and 'whys' behind these actions. For example, the monster poses questions during his stories that help Conor understand his own conflicted emotions and desire to hurt others:

Humans are complicated beasts, the monster said. How can a queen be both a good witch and a bad witch? How can a prince be a murderer and a saviour. . . How can invisible men make themselves more lonely by being seen?

By encouraging Conor to be self-reflective, the monster empowers him with tools to come to terms with the hard truths of his life.

Initially, the relationship seems quite adversarial in certain ways because Conor doesn't understand the message in the monster's stories and continues to act out and be sarcastic. As Conor's self-awareness grows, however, the monster's language softens. For example, the monster helps Conor forgive himself for some of his previous destructive attitudes and behaviors, saying, “You were merely wishing for the end of pain. . . Your own pain. An end to how it isolated you. It is the most human wish of all.” The monster wants Conor to be free from denial and to learn to discriminate between lies, constructed reality, and truth. 

By the end of the novel, the relationship has echoes of a parental connection: "He [Conor] faintly felt the huge hands of the monster pick him up, forming a little nest to hold him. He was only vaguely aware of the leaves and branches twisting around him, softening and widening to let him lie back." By releasing his fear of the truth, Conor feels more secure in who he is and recognizes that he is, in fact, loved, symbolized through this final, tender image of protection.

When Conor first meets the monster, he believes the monster is his nemesis; however, over the course of the novel, the monster goes from being threatening to becoming a comfort to Conor as Conor faces his mother's impending death from cancer. When Conor first meets the monster, the monster is menacing: "the monster roared even louder and smashed an arm through Conor's window, shattering glass and wood and brick" (page 8). When Conor says he is not afraid of the monster, the monster replies, "You will be...Before the end" (page 9). Then, Conor remembers the monster trying to eat him alive before he wakes up from his nightmare. 

In the middle part of the book, the monster says that it wants to talk with Conor. When Conor asks the monster what it wants from him, the monster replies, mysteriously, "It's not what I want from you, Conor O'Malley...It is what you want from me" (page 34). Conor still feels strangely calm around the monster, even though he is having a nightmare. The monster tells Conor that it will tell him three stories and that Conor will tell him the fourth. The monster says, "You know that your truth, the one that you hide, is the truth that you are most afraid of, Conor O'Malley" (page 38). The truth that Conor hides is that his mother is sick with cancer and that Conor has no one around him to comfort him, as his relationships with his father and grandmother are not good.

In the end, after Conor tells his story, the monster comforts him. Even though Conor wants the monster to heal his mother, the monster says, "I did not come to heal her... I came to heal you" (page 193). By forcing him to listen to its stories and tell his own, the monster has healed Conor and prepared him for his mother's death.