Monkey Beach

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014

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Summary

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

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Crows as Spirit Messengers

Within Monkey Beach, birds are both harbingers of doom and reminders of connections to spirits. Thus, they hold a symbolic position echoing Lisa’s ability to communicate with the dead, which both challenges her mental state and gives her a sense of belonging and connectedness. The very first line of Monkey Beach mentions birds, as Lisa is awaked by hearing six crows speak to her in Haisla, “La’es—Go down to the bottom of the ocean” (1). As a boy, Jimmy begins caring for crows, feeding and naming them. Ma-ma-oo encouraged Jimmy’s habit: “Ma-ma-oo told Jimmy that feeding crows brought you good luck” (125).

Jimmy has just disappeared at the beginning of the novel, and given his connection to the birds, the voices of the crows speaking to Lisa can be interpreted as a spiritual connection. Similarly, at the end of Part 1, Lisa is again awakened by a crow, one Jimmy named Spotty, who tells her in Haisla, “Go into the water. La’sda, la’sda” (135). That moment, once again connected to Jimmy’s spirit, is what spurs her decision to travel alone to Namu, where Jimmy had gone missing.

However, there are signs throughout the novel that crows can also be ominous signs, much like the sightings of the little man that Lisa experiences. When Lisa meets the witch-like woman Screwy Ruby on the streets of Kitamaat, she describes her “[t]ilting her head like a crow, her eyes rolled” (188). Ruby taunts Lisa for being a “bad girl.” Shortly afterwards, Lisa mentions her cat Alexis gruesomely killing a sparrow and meowing longingly, wanting to attack the crows outside. Lisa then has a vision of Alexis finding “a dead crow with a missing wing” (173), which Jimmy then flings into the air. The vision convinces Lisa that something terrible is going to happen to Jimmy and she and her friends forcefully keep an eye on him. By forcing Jimmy into isolation, they prevented him from catching the mumps from a friend. Thus, Lisa feels correct in having seen the crows as an ominous portent, strengthening her belief in her ability to communicate with the dead and other spirits. In the final scene of the novel, Lisa notes that “[t]he crows have disappeared,” symbolically suggesting that she has come to terms with her abilities and overcome the sense that communicating with the dead is terrifying (374).

Food, Drink, Cigarettes as Sacrifice

Monkey Beach frequently mentions food, such as oolichan grease and soapberries, as a reference to Haisla traditions. Food is seen as part of living culture and sharing among family and friends. Yet food, drink, and tobacco also provide symbolic connections between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Food, drink, and tobacco serve as offerings made in honor of the dead that open up a portal to communication with them.

Lisa learns about this possibility through the example of Ma-ma-oo. She watches her grandmother share Johnny Walker whisky, cigarettes, and Twinkies as offerings to Ba-ba-oo. Later, Lisa similarly offers tobacco to Mick. The gifts of food, drink, and tobacco function as sacrificial offerings to the dead. The living—Lisa, Ma-ma-oo, and others—offer things that are valuable to them, or that sustain their life, as a sign of respecting and valuing the dead. As Ma-ma-oo says in her poem to Ba-ba-oo at his grave, “Food is dust in my mouth without you” (174).

For Ma-ma-oo and Lisa, offerings of food demonstrate the attempt of the living to communicate with the dead. The task of actively communicating with the dead is different than the way Lisa is passively visited by sprits throughout the book. By making offerings to the dead, she takes charge of the communication. They utilize food and drink that they either make themselves or know to be favorites of the people that they had actual connections with in life. These choices give their actions a sense of legitimacy, unlike the silliness evident when Pooch, Cheese, Frank, and Lisa use a commercial Ouija board to try and contact the dead.

Water as a Link Between Life and Death

Water serves multiple symbolic roles throughout Monkey Beach. Most characters in Kitamaat have some connection to water, whether through fishing, swimming, boating, or some combination of these activities. Water is thus an integral aspect of life in the area and a powerful symbol in its culture. Thus, it is natural for Lisa to frequently mention her family’s time fishing, swimming, and camping on beaches, in addition to the geography of the area, describing Kitamaat as “seven hundred Haisla people tucked in between the mountains and the ocean” (5).

Yet in a symbolic sense, water represents the border between sky and water, water and land, and above all, between the living and the dead. Monkey Beach makes contact between the living and the dead central, with Lisa frequently visited by spirits and even, in ghost Ma-ma-oo’s words, going “too far into this world” when she is on Monkey Beach trying to find Jimmy (372). In Monkey Beach, the border between the living and the dead is as fluid as water itself.

Because the novel’s action builds from Jimmy’s disastrous fishing trip, and because Jimmy was a champion swimmer, water is specifically connected to his disappearance. The novel opens with a spirit directing Lisa (in Haisla) to “La’es,” meaning “Go down to the bottom of the ocean” (1). Later, Jimmy’s crow Spotty similarly directs her to “[g]o into the water” in search of Jimmy (135). The implication is that Jimmy has died at sea, though this is never confirmed in the novel. Jimmy is regarded as a master of water, given his swimming talents, while Lisa describes herself as a mediocre swimmer. Yet the water is also Jimmy’s downfall, when he is lost and/or dies on a fishing trip, after giving up swimming due to a shoulder injury. Thus, water is both familiar and a danger to Jimmy, much as Lisa’s talents for communicating with the dead are seen as both positive and potentially dangerous.

Ultimately, Lisa does go down to the water, as the spirits direct her, traveling to Monkey Beach on her way to join the search for Jimmy. Going to the water means facing the dead. In the process of visiting Monkey Beach, and by extension the land of the dead, Lisa herself nearly drowns. Yet she reemerges, with the warning from the spirit of Ma-ma-oo not to harm herself, proving that “[t]here is nothing like being on the ocean to clear the head,” as she states earlier (138).