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The Little Man
Growing up along the northern reaches of the Pacific Coast of North America, Jimmy and Lisa hear stories about the b’gws (sasquatch) from Dad, who passes down the stories he learned from his own father, Ba-ba-oo. In Monkey Beach, the sasquatches represent both the potential magic in the world around people and a connection with the past. In the latter symbolism, Lisa maintains an emotional connection with her missing brother Jimmy whenever she recalls his obsession with the sasquatches or thinks about their visits to Monkey Beach in search of the elusive creatures. But the sasquatches, like the little man and the mysterious messages of the crows, also suggest that there are mysterious, sometimes magical forces in the world, and that people who—like Lisa, Ma-ma-oo, and Frank—are willing to hold themselves open to this possibility can receive insights and knowledge far deeper than everyone else.
Sasquatch Quotes in Monkey Beach
The Monkey Beach quotes below all refer to the symbol of Sasquatch. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 1: Love Like the Ocean
Quotes
In front of him were more than twenty very hairy men. They looked as surprised as he was. They were tall, with thick brown fur on their chests, arms and legs. Their heads were shaped oddly, very large and slanted back sharply from the brow. One of them growled and started towards him. He panicked and bolted back into the bushes, and they began to chase him.
They were fast. He was quickly cornered at the foot of a cliff. He climbed up. They gathered at the bottom in a semicircle and roared. When they followed him up, he raised his gun and, knowing he’d probably have only one shot, picked the leader. The trapper shot him in the head, and the creature landed with a heavy thump at the bottom of the cliff. As the other sasquatches let out howls of grief, the trapper ran.
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Get the entire Monkey Beach LitChart as a printable PDF.
Sasquatch Symbol Timeline in Monkey Beach
The timeline below shows where the symbol Sasquatch appears in Monkey Beach. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: Love Like the Ocean
...of Monkey Beach. According to stories passed down from Lisa’s Ba-ba-oo through her dad, the b’gwus—sasquatches—live near Monkey Beach. In Jimmy’s favorite story, two trappers in the mountains near Monkey Beach...
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...Jimmy like the scary version, especially when Dad makes sound effects and puts on his sasquatch mask—allegedly modeled after the surviving trapper’s description.
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...flashes back to the summer Jimmy is eight or nine. He’s so impressed with the sasquatch story that he buys a camera and then begs Dad to take them to Monkey...
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...a grey sweatshirt—crashes into the clearing, snapping photos. He wants to know which way the sasquatch went, but Lisa, already beginning to doubt what she saw, points back toward camp. Jimmy...
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...swim up the channel this far at high tide, and the woods are full of sasquatches—or at least grizzly bears masquerading as sasquatches.
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Chapter 2: The Song of Your Breath
...Jimmy has friends over, Lisa hatches a plan to torment him. She finds Dad’s old sasquatch mask in the attic and hides in Jimmy’s closet. Although she momentarily wonders if she’s...
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...otter-child; in another, an adulterous woman tries to drown her husband, who becomes a b’gwus (sasquatch) and murders her. But to really understand the stories, Lisa needs to understand Haisla, which...
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...The creek next to the house leads up to a lake where the last official sasquatch sighting—well, sasquatch footprint sighting, to be exact—happened, according to Ma-ma-oo.
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Chapter 3: In Search of the Elusive Sasquatch
...before she notices the brown shaggy fur, sharply tilted forehead, and pointy teeth of a sasquatch. Lisa pulls over and jumps out of the car, rousing Frank. For a moment, Lisa...
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The b’gwus (sasquatches) favor Monkey Beach in part because their favorite seafood—cockles and clams—like to spawn there. But...
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B’gwus (sasquatch) isn’t the only bogeyman who populates the Haisla stories; there’s also t’sonoqua, a female ogre...
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Chapter 4: The Land of the Dead
...sand. She’s warm and so light she could drift away. She hears a howling b’gwus (sasquatch) nearby, and the sound of a speedboat in the distance.
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