Monkey Beach

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Pages 1-40

Part 1, Pages 40-82

Part 1, Pages 82-138

Part 2, Pages 139-179

Part 2, Pages 179-232

Part 2, Pages 232-294

Part 3, Pages 295-336

Parts 3-4, Pages 336-374

Character Analysis

Themes

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Part 1, Pages 40-82Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “Love Like the Ocean”

Part 1, Pages 40-63 Summary

Lisa continues reminiscing about childhood. She remembers going to the beach with Jimmy, an excellent swimmer with ambitions of joining the Olympic team. He is good-looking and popular with girls but ignores them all except for one named Adelaine Jones (nicknamed Karaoke). Lisa is a terrible swimmer and prefers to hang out with her cousins Tab (Tabitha) and Erica. Tab’s mother is Al’s alcoholic sister Trudy (Gertrude).

Mick occasionally babysits Jimmy and Lisa. One night Lisa asks him if he had been shot. Mick explains to her that he had been “on a reserve called Rosebud” and there had been a scuffle with a group called the Guardians of the Oglala Nation who were trying to frighten a woman Mick had befriended (53). Lisa recalls learning more about Mick’s passion for Indigenous rights. At an event commemorating the passing of one of Al’s cousins, other family members are in formal clothes, but Mick staggers in wearing a leather jacket and a T-shirt proclaiming American Indian rights.

Lisa’s thoughts wander to her grandmother, Ma-ma-oo. She remembers Trudy and Ma-ma-oo not getting along, suggesting unresolved issues between them. Tab tells Lisa it is because their grandfather, Ba-ba-oo, “beat Gran. Instead of sending him away, she sent Mick and Mom to residential school” (59). Lisa is clueless about why that is a problem.

Lisa’s dad had gone to school to be an accountant, but he quit his job after being passed over for promotion four times. He worked at home for a while, then at a cannery. Mick “hated straight work” and preferred to camp instead of rent an apartment when possible, while Lisa’s father “didn’t like to be anywhere you couldn’t get cable” (60). Lisa sometimes helps Mick with fishing, beating the fish in the head to show her strength (61). Once, Lisa and her mother go to Mick’s house and hear sounds of “breaking glass and swearing” (61). According to Mick’s drinking buddy (and Trudy’s on-again, off-again boyfriend) Josh, Mick is upset because Elvis has died. Mick disappears again, later revealing that he had gone to visit Elvis’s home, Graceland, in Tennessee.

Part 1, Pages 64-73 Summary

One day, Lisa is playing with her cousin Erica when some bullies harass them. Lisa knocks one named Frank off of his bike and bites him until he bleeds. The other boys kick at her and Frank punches her in the face. Erica’s brother breaks up the fight, and Lisa destroys Frank’s bike in a rage. Frank’s mother calls Lisa a monster, but Mick consoles her, saying, “you are my favorite monster in the whole wide world” (67).

Mick plays socially conscious music for Lisa, telling her mother, “[s]he’s got to know about these things” (68). In school, Lisa is “forced to read a book that said that the Indians on the northwest coast of British Columbia had killed and eaten people as religious sacrifices” (68). She refuses, telling her teacher “it’s all lies” and singing a profanity-laden protest song. Lisa recalls that Mick “had the teacher’s note laminated and framed,” filling her with pride (69). Lisa also meets Mick’s friend Barry. The men know each other from having been involved in A.I.M. (the American Indian Movement) and from protesting at the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C. Mick says that Barry is trying to get “support for another hopeless cause. Some caribou thing up north,” but Mick has stopped his involvement with activism (73).

Part 1, Pages 73-82 Summary

Lisa and Mick go looking for a wild plant called qºalh’m (salmonberries) and bring some to Ma-ma-oo. Ma-ma-oo is uninterested in modern things like television. Instead, she spends her time cooking, picking berries, fishing, and other traditional activities. Lisa is with Ma-ma-oo one day when she buys a bottle of Johnny Walker whisky and some cigarettes to honor her dead husband Sherman (Ba-ba-oo). Ma-ma-oo says something in Haisla over a fire and pours the whisky on it. She tells Lisa that Ba-ba-oo is with them even though he is dead, and places a Twinkie, his favorite snack, on the fire. Lisa reveals that Ba-ba-oo died after slipping in the bath and cracking his head, and that Mick found his body. Later, Tab and Lisa visit Ba-ba-oo’s grave. He had fought in World War II, losing an arm. Yet on his return, Veteran’s Affairs would not give him money “because they said Indian Affairs was taking care of him” (81). Tab and Lisa smoke, and Tab says that she wants to leave Kitamaat.

Part 1, Pages 40-82 Analysis

After establishing the general structure of the narrative and describing Lisa’s connection to the supernatural, Monkey Beach deepens its discussion of Lisa’s relationship to her family members. Mick and Lisa share a particularly strong bond. She looks up to him, saying, “l wanted to prove I wasn’t a wussy girl” (61). He responds by accepting her, ironically and affectionately calling her both a “delicate Haisla flower” and “Monster” (25, 71). Both Mick and Lisa exemplify an independence and willingness to go against the grain. Those traits go hand in hand with a measure of instability, exemplified by Mick’s mysterious past and habit of disappearing, and by Lisa’s rebelliousness. Mick’s character is distinct from Lisa’s father Al, who provides a much more conservative example.

Lisa’s relationships with members of her own age group are equally multifaceted. A talented swimmer, Jimmy achieves levels of success, admiration, and popularity that Lisa cannot imagine. Lisa feels more comfortable among her cousin Tab, who has a troubled home life but is boldly independent. Tab has wisdom beyond Lisa’s, telling her, “God, you can be so dense,” when Lisa does not understand that Ba-ba-oo was abusive and his actions traumatized Mick, and Trudy in particular (59).

Buoyed by the examples provided by Mick and Tab, Lisa develops her own independent spirit. She expresses a curiosity about Mick’s involvement with A.I.M., including a protest at the Rosebud reservation, the home of some who were killed at the infamous Wounded Knee massacre. When Mick encourages her awareness of anti-authoritarianism and social consciousness, Lisa responds positively.

Ma-ma-oo also emerges as an increasingly important influence on Lisa. Like Mick and Tab, Ma-ma-oo accepts Lisa for who she is. Ma-ma-oo nurtures Lisa’s connections to the dead, spirituality, and Haisla traditions. Moreover, Ma-ma-oo shows Lisa traditional ways of communicating with the dead, including making offerings of food and drink on a fire in honor of Lisa’s grandfather Ba-ba-oo. Later in the novel, Lisa replicates this practice for Mick after he dies. Most importantly, Ma-ma-oo’s example lends validity and assurance to Lisa’s contact with spirits, which becomes more prevalent as the novel proceeds.