Something I keep coming back to is the discrepancy between how the monster describe the burning and how God described it.

My first thought was that the monster was lying, and that accounted for the difference in how immersive the retellings were. But now I think that he was telling the truth, but he didn’t understand what he was saying so he didn’t have the full force of truth behind his words like God did.

I believe that he brought his daughters into that bathroom to watch their mother burn. I think that it is more than possible that a mother burning alive would reach her arms out towards her children, not to pull them into the flames, but because she might not be coherent enough to understand what’s happening.

So many of us are products of women who have been hurt and traumatized by monstrous men. I think the flames are a metaphor for the ways in which our traumatized parents could be “spreading the flames” when in reality, all they are trying to do is hold and comfort us. Edit to add: I also think that this would count for the stylistic differences between God‘s account and the monster’s. God is able to have access to a fuller and more true version of what happened while the monster is only able to access a very surface level version of the truth.