We investigate the monopole excitations of the soliton in the Nambu--Jona--Lasinio model. By studying the solutions to the corresponding Bethe--Salpeter equation in the background of the soliton we exclude the existence of real large amplitude fluctuations. This allows us to treat the collective coordinate for the monopole excitations, which parametrizes the extension of the soliton, in the harmonic approximation. The canonical quantization of this coordinate yields a spectrum which agrees reasonably well with the empirical data for the Roper resonance, N(1440), and the corresponding one for the Delta, \Delta(1600). We also comment on going beyond the harmonic approximation
