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The little man who visits Lisa on the eve of momentous changes throughout her life symbolizes the raw power of the spiritual world, which sometimes helps and sometimes endangers those who encounter it. Although most of the visits Lisa describes in the book predict bad events—the tsunami, the massacre of the family’s chickens by local hawks, Mick’s death, Ma-ma-oo’s death—he doesn’t just predict catastrophe. He also appears before Mick’s joyful return home, and once his arrival helps Lisa protect Jimmy from getting sick. After Mick’s death, Ma-ma-oo explains to Lisa that her gift of contact with the spirit world is powerful but also dangerous, since no one remembers enough about the old ways anymore to teach her to use it appropriately. Accordingly, the little man gives Lisa a certain power, but she doesn’t understand enough about his messages to be able to use them effectively. In this way, he points towards the historical violence that has deprived many Indigenous Peoples of their cultural heritage and traditions.
The Little Man Quotes in Monkey Beach
The Monkey Beach quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Little Man. 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
Now that I think back, the pattern of the little man’s visits seems unwelcomely obvious, but at the time, his arrivals and departures had no meaning. As I grew older, he became a variation of the monster under the bed or the thing in the closet, a nightmare that faded with morning. He liked to sit on the top of my dresser when he came to visit, and he had a shock of bright red hair which stood up in messy, tangled puffs that he sometimes hid under a black top hat. When he was in a mean mood, he did a jerky little dance and pretended to poke at my eyes. The night before the hawks came, he drooped his head and blew me sad kisses that sparkled silver and gold in the dark and fell as soft as confetti.
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Chapter 2: The Song of Your Breath
Quotes
“He’s a guide, but not a reliable one. Never trust the spirit world too much. They think different from the living.”
“What about Mom?”
“When Gladys was very young, lots of death going on […] She used to know who was going to die next […]”
“Mom doesn’t see anything” […]
“She doesn’t tell you […] Or she’s forgotten how […] Her grandmother, now she was a real medicine woman. Oh, people were scared of her. If you wanted to talk to your dead, she was the one people went to. She could really dance, and she made beautiful songs—that no one sings any more […]”
“[…] How do you do medicine?”
“All the people knew the old ways are gone. Anyone else is doing it in secret these days. But there’s good medicine and bad. Best not to deal with it at all if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
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“Good, hey?” she said, pleased with the way I’d demolished her dish.
I nodded. She picked up my bowl, but instead of putting it in the sink, added more uh’s. I kept smiling. I had no idea how I was going to finish it. Ma-ma-oo practically licked her bowl clean. She waited for me to finish, sipping her tea. I hoped she would go to the bathroom, so I could pour it down the sink, but she sat and looked mildly into the distance. I made my way through the second bowl. I ate slower. Ma-ma-oo patted my hand. “We have enough for the whole winter,” she said.
“Oh, good,” I said.
By the end of the week, I had become used to the taste. I didn’t even notice the bitterness any more. It was like whipped cream, but not as nauseatingly sweet as the canned stuff Mom bought.
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Get the entire Monkey Beach LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Little Man Symbol Timeline in Monkey Beach
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Little Man appears in Monkey Beach. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: Love Like the Ocean
...injured brown-and-white spotted dog. She hears a sound and looks up to see a red-headed little man . He shakes his head when she asks if it’s his dog, but then Mom...
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...with him about her dreams. She knows they have meaning, especially when she sees the little man . She remembers that his first appearance, the time she saw the dog in the...
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Lisa fears going to sleep that night, lest the little man return. She lies awake listening to the sounds of the family reunion going on below:...
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In a flashback, Lisa recalls the return of the little man , one morning after a long absence during which she had convinced herself that he...
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Chapter 2: The Song of Your Breath
...explains that the biggest, strongest, and oldest trees have a spirit who looks like a little man with red hair. This leaves Lisa shaking. She asks—as casually as she can—what seeing this...
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Ma-ma-oo warns Lisa that the little man is an unreliable guide, then she explains that when Mom was a little girl, she...
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...her three nickels. She asks Ruby if she is a witch. Then she describes the little man . Ruby calls Lisa a bad girl; they trade insults, each insisting the other is...
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...that “someone” is in the room. Tab pulls out a knife; Lisa worries about the little man . Then Alexis leaps onto the bed with a dead mouse. Lisa asks where Tab...
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...floating on the ocean. She feels relaxed until she opened her eyes to see the little man hanging by the neck from a yellow rope and smiling eerily at her. She hears...
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...giddily tells them that Jimmy is going to die and describes her dreams with the little man . She believes that if she’d heeded his warning, she might have saved Mick, and...
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Early one morning, Lisa remembers, the little man jerks her awake by touching her shoulder. She screams and screams at him to get...
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...to be sent to the residential school with Mick and Trudy. The next morning, the little man wakes Lisa early, and she goes downstairs to find Trudy sitting in front of the...
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...assuming Lisa is on her period, leaves to get her a hot water bottle. The little man appears on the dresser. He looks different this time, and Lisa angrily tells him that...
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...it quickly, and everything will be fine. But suddenly, in his absence, Lisa misses the little man —it is much harder, she decides, to have bad news come at her unexpectedly like...
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