Joan in Only a Monster: Character Analysis

Overview: The Girl Who Refused the Story She Was Given

Joan Chang-Hunt begins Only a Monster as an ordinary teenage girl with an extraordinary secret she doesn't yet understand. Half-human and half-monster, she has spent her life believing her family's "monster" identity was a playful nickname—until a chance encounter with a confused elderly neighbor reveals the truth: her family steals life from humans to travel through time, and Joan has inherited that power. What follows is a brutal education in the monster world, a massacre that destroys her family, and a desperate journey across decades to undo the damage—a journey that ultimately forces Joan to confront the most dangerous question of all: what kind of person she is willing to become.

Joan's arc is defined by her refusal to accept the world as it is presented to her. She rejects the idea that the massacre is inevitable, rejects the notion that she must be either a hero or a monster, and finally rejects the very timeline that was built on suffering. Her story is one of moral awakening, but it is also a story about the cost of love and the terrible choices that love can demand.

Plot Role: From Bystander to Catalyst

Joan's role in the narrative evolves dramatically over the course of the novel. She begins as a passive figure—a girl who has been kept in the dark about her own nature, protected (or perhaps controlled) by her grandmother's decision to hide the truth from her. The prologue establishes this dynamic: Gran tells six-year-old Joan she is a monster, but the family never explains what that means. When Joan's power manifests during her encounter with Mr. Solt, she is thrust into a world she never knew existed, and her ignorance makes her vulnerable.

Her discovery of her time-stealing ability is the inciting incident that sets the entire plot in motion. It leads her to Nick, the human boy she loves, who turns out to be the "hero" trained from childhood to kill monsters. The massacre at Holland House—where Nick kills Gran, Uncle Gus, Aunt Ada, and Bertie—transforms Joan from a confused teenager into a survivor with a mission. From that point forward, she becomes the driving force of the narrative: she insists on trying to change the past, she pushes the group toward the Monster Court, and she ultimately makes the choice to unmake Nick and the timeline itself.

Joan is also the narrative's moral center, though not in a simple or comfortable way. She steals time from humans—hundreds, possibly thousands of people—to fuel her travels. She lies to her father to protect him. She manipulates young Dorothy Hunt for information. She even considers killing Nick in the Monster Court. Her journey is not a clean arc from innocence to righteousness; it is a messy, painful negotiation with the question of what she is willing to do to save the people she loves.

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

Joan's primary motivation is love—for her family, for Nick, and ultimately for the possibility of a better world. This love is shown through her actions rather than stated outright. When she learns the truth about her family, her first instinct is not to embrace her power but to recoil from it. She tells Ruth she never wants to see her family again, a reaction born of horror at what they are. But when her family is killed, she risks everything to bring them back, even though she knows the timeline "protects itself" and resists change.

Her stubbornness is one of her defining traits. Aaron repeatedly tells her that changing the past is impossible, but Joan refuses to accept it. She argues that monsters change things all the time just by traveling, and she insists that if the timeline has to resist change, there must be times when it fails. This stubbornness is both her greatest strength and her greatest flaw. It drives her to break into the Monster Court, to confront Nick, and to keep fighting long after others would have given up. But it also leads her to risk her companions' lives on a gamble that fails—the Court contains not the transformatio device she hoped for, but an empty prison cell.

Joan is also defined by her empathy, which sets her apart from many of the monsters she meets. She is horrified by the cost of time travel—the human lives stolen to fuel it. She feels guilt for what she did to Mr. Solt, even though it was an accident. She is disturbed by the artifacts in the Monster Court, recognizing the enormous human cost they represent. This empathy is what makes her final choice so devastating: she loves Nick, but she cannot allow the timeline he was built to enforce to stand.

Chronological Arc: The Shape of Joan's Journey

Joan's arc can be divided into several distinct phases, each marked by a shift in her understanding of herself and her world.

Phase One: Innocence and Ignorance. In the prologue and early chapters, Joan is a normal teenager. She has a crush on Nick, she teases with her cousins, and she believes her family's "monster" identity is a joke. Her grandmother's revelation that she is a real monster is met with disbelief and denial.

Phase Two: Shock and Rejection. After the incident with Mr. Solt, Joan learns the truth about her family's power. She is horrified and distances herself from them, declaring she never wants to see them again. This phase is short-lived, however, because the massacre at Holland House forces her to confront the stakes of her new reality.

Phase Three: Survival and Grief. Joan flees with Aaron Oliver, a young monster whose family was also targeted. She learns to steal time, travels to 1993, and begins to understand the monster world. This phase is marked by grief and a desperate hope that she can change the past. She writes letters to herself and her grandmother, but they dissolve in the rain—the timeline's resistance made visible.

Phase Four: Action and Recklessness. Joan reunites with Ruth and learns about the "true timeline" and the transformatio. She becomes increasingly determined to break into the Monster Court, even as Aaron warns her against it. Her recklessness culminates in the failed Court break-in, where she discovers an empty prison cell instead of the device she sought.

Phase Five: Revelation and Choice. Joan learns the truth about Nick—that he was tortured and conditioned to become the hero, with his family killed over and over to break him. She also discovers her own true power: the ability to unmake things, to turn them back to their original state. In the climactic scene, she kisses Nick and then unmakes him, restoring her family and erasing the hero from existence.

Phase Six: Aftermath. In the epilogue, Joan is recovering from the illness caused by expending her power. She has lost her unmaking ability, and the world has changed—Holland House is now a bombed ruin, a casualty of the altered timeline. She meets Jamie Liu, who remembers fragments of the old timeline, and she promises that if the woman who took him captive returns, they will be waiting.

Relationships: The People Who Shape Joan

Nick. Joan's relationship with Nick is the emotional core of the novel. From their first meeting, she feels an inexplicable recognition—"like she'd known him her whole life." This is later explained by the Liu family's belief that the timeline tries to repair itself by bringing together people who belonged together in the true timeline. Nick is both her love and her enemy: he killed her family, but he was also a victim, tortured and conditioned into becoming the hero. Joan's final choice—to kiss him and then unmake him—is an act of love and destruction intertwined. She cannot save him as he is, so she unmakes him, erasing the hero and everything he did.

Gran (Dorothy Hunt). Gran is Joan's guide into the monster world, though she is also the one who kept Joan in the dark. She tells Joan the truth about her nature, warns her about the secret power she will develop, and gives her the necklace that serves as a key to the Monster Court. Joan's grief for Gran is complicated by the knowledge that Gran's secrecy may have contributed to the massacre. In the 1990s, Joan meets young Dorothy and finds her untrustworthy, a reminder that people are not always what they seem.

Ruth. Joan's cousin Ruth is her anchor in the aftermath of the massacre. Ruth is pragmatic and tough, and she has been searching for Joan for nearly two years when they reunite. Their relationship is one of mutual support, though Ruth is often more cautious than Joan. Ruth's Hunt power is burned out during the Court escape, leaving her vulnerable—a reminder of the costs of their mission.

Aaron Oliver. Aaron is an unlikely ally. His family can identify monsters by sight, and he owes Joan a life-debt after she saves him in the maze. He is cynical and pragmatic, constantly urging caution, but he also provides crucial knowledge about the monster world. His public disownment by his father Edmund is a turning point, severing him from his family and forcing him to commit fully to Joan's cause.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Joan's journey is defined by a series of pivotal decisions, each with profound consequences.

Decision One: To steal time and travel. Joan's first act of time theft is accidental—she touches Mr. Solt's neck while struggling with him and unknowingly steals half a day of his life. This decision (if it can be called that) sets everything in motion. It reveals her nature, leads to the massacre, and forces her into the monster world.

Decision Two: To try to change the past. After the massacre, Joan refuses to accept that her family's deaths are inevitable. She writes letters, seeks out the transformatio, and ultimately breaks into the Monster Court. This decision leads to the failed Court break-in, but it also leads to the discovery of the recordings that reveal Nick's true nature.

Decision Three: To go to the Monster Court. Joan's insistence on breaking into the Court is reckless. She risks her own life and the lives of Ruth, Aaron, and Tom. The mission fails—the transformatio is a myth, and the archive contains only an empty cell. But the failure is not total: Joan finds the plastic square that contains the recordings, and she discovers her own power when she turns the lock to stone.

Decision Four: To unmake Nick. This is Joan's final and most consequential decision. She loves Nick, and he has just told her he loves her and wants to try to make the timeline better. But Joan knows that the timeline itself is built on suffering—Nick's suffering, and the suffering of everyone he killed. She kisses him and then unmakes him, restoring her family and erasing the hero. The cost is immense: she loses her power, and the world is changed in ways she cannot fully predict.

Themes and Symbolic Connections

Joan's character is deeply connected to the novel's central themes. Her journey explores the moral cost of time travel, as she is forced to confront the human lives stolen to fuel her travels. She is also a meditation on the construction of heroism: Nick is not born a hero but made one through torture, and Joan must decide whether to accept the story she has been given or reject it.

The theme of memory, truth, and erased timelines is central to Joan's experience. She learns that the timeline she lives in may not be the "true" one, and that memories can be overwritten or erased. Her own memories of Nick persist even after the timeline changes, suggesting that some truths cannot be fully erased.

Joan's relationship with her family explores family loyalty versus personal conscience. She loves her family, but she is horrified by what they do. Her decision to unmake Nick and restore her family is an act of loyalty, but it is also an act of conscience—she cannot allow the hero's timeline to stand.

Finally, Joan's story is about free will and the self-correcting timeline. The timeline resists change, but Joan proves that it can be changed—at a terrible cost. Her final act demonstrates that individuals can shape their world, even if the price is their own happiness.

Questions and Answers

1. Why does Joan's grandmother keep the truth about monsters from her?

Gran forbids the family from telling Joan about monsters because she believes Joan cannot travel in time. This is revealed in Chapter 12, when Ruth explains that Gran thought Joan's power was too weak to be useful. Gran's decision is protective in intent—she wants to shield Joan from the dangers of the monster world—but it also leaves Joan unprepared for the massacre.

2. What is Joan's true power, and how does she discover it?

Joan's true power is the ability to unmake things—to turn them back to their original state. She first manifests it at the Monster Court, when she turns a metal lock to stone (or rather, back to ore). She fully understands and unleashes it in the climactic scene with Nick, when she unmakes him and everything he did. Gran warns her about this power before dying, telling her to reveal it to no one.

3. Why does Joan decide to unmake Nick even though she loves him?

Joan loves Nick, but she recognizes that the timeline he was built to enforce is fundamentally unjust. Nick was tortured and conditioned to become the hero, and his existence depends on the suffering of monsters and humans alike. Joan's decision to unmake him is an act of mercy and necessity: she cannot save her family without erasing the hero, and she cannot accept a world built on such suffering.

4. How does Joan's relationship with Aaron Oliver change over the course of the novel?

Joan initially resents Aaron, whose father tried to kill her. She depends on him for survival but distrusts him. Over time, however, they become allies. Aaron risks his life to help her, and he is publicly disowned by his father for his involvement. By the end, they are companions who have survived impossible odds together, though their relationship remains tinged with tension.

5. What does Joan's final promise to Jamie Liu reveal about her character?

In the epilogue, Joan promises Jamie that if the woman who took him captive returns, they will be waiting. This reveals that Joan has not given up her fight, even after losing her power. She is still committed to protecting others and confronting the forces that shaped the timeline. Her promise suggests that her story is not over—and that she will continue to resist the world as it is.

Conclusion: A Hero on Her Own Terms

Joan Chang-Hunt is not a conventional hero. She steals time from innocent people, lies to those she loves, and makes choices that cause immense suffering. But she is also a girl who refuses to accept a world built on cruelty. Her journey from ignorance to understanding, from passivity to action, and from love to sacrifice is the heart of Only a Monster. By the end, she has unmade the hero and the timeline that created him—but she has also unmade herself, losing her power and the love that defined her. Her story is a reminder that the most heroic acts are often the most costly, and that the people we become are shaped by the choices we make when everything is at stake.

For more on the novel's ending and its implications, see the ending explained page, or explore the questions and answers section for further discussion.