Just think of it as a design pattern, but a bit more strict than the Gang of Four patterns. Fundamentally it's a relationship between types and other types such

Just think of it as a design pattern, but a bit more strict than the Gang of Four patterns. Fundamentally it's a relationship between types and other types such that certain operations make sense and follow well-understood rules (the monadic laws). Study the monadic laws, and try playing with the State, IO, and List monads to get a better sense of what those operations are and why they're useful for sequencing in a pure-functional context.