Year 7 mini-essay based on A Monster Calls

How does Patrick Ness present Grandma in this extract from ‘A Monster Calls’?

• Write a mini-essay explaining how Grandma is presented by the writer

• Your mini-essay should be one long PEAEA[EA] paragraph

In the extract from ‘A Monster Calls’, Patrick Ness presents Grandma as a caring woman who is struggling to cope with her daughter’s illness. When Grandma first looks up after walking into the sitting room, she begins to speak, but stops herself “by reflex from saying hell in front of Conor”. In addition, before she comes home, Ness reveals that she had just had the “same old night at the hospital with Conor’s mum”. The fact that Grandma stops herself from saying hell shows that she cares a lot about Conor. This is because, in the modern world, when you care about someone, you tend to try to set a good example, to ensure that they talk and act as they should. When you don’t care about someone, it doesn’t matter to you that they grow up to be a good-mannered person, and it isn’t your job to show them how to act, so therefore you would just act and talk however you like. This includes saying bad words like ‘hell’. Because of this, the fact that Grandma avoids saying it in front of Conor shows that she cares about him. Furthermore, the fact that Grandma had spent the night at the hospital with her daughter shows that she cares deeply for her too, as if you are willing to use a whole evening to make someone happy, they must mean a lot to you due to how much they are giving up to see you, as Grandma may have other things to do. Also the phrase ‘same old’ is used in this sentence, which shows that Grandma has done this before, likely multiple times a week. All of this shows that Grandma is a caring woman. Furthermore, when Grandma sees the destruction Conor has caused in her living room, her face “[twists] in tears” and the “moaning [spills] out of her.” Grandma’s facial expression here suggests that she is extremely upset. She is currently going through a lot due to her daughter’s illness and because of this, her sadness may not be just from the ruins of her sitting room, but from the fact that her daughter could be dying. In addition, when she begins to moan, the way that Conor reacts implies that she doesn’t normally act like this. This shows that all of this sorrow has built up inside her, and this incident is what has put her over the top, and it is all spilling out of her through moaning and groaning. Because of this, it shows that Grandma is struggling to cope with her daughter’s illness. All of this shows that Grandma is a caring woman who is struggling to cope with her daughter’s illness.

by Izzy Sampson (Year 7)