The Ocean at the End of the Lane

“I make art, sometimes I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty places in my life. Some of them. Not all.”

Art is an act of making something out of nothing. Often, it’s an attempt to communicate a feeling or idea; sometimes, it’s simply the pain of nothing that inspires artwork. The narrator signals a deep dissatisfaction about something in his life, something his art hasn’t reached. The quote can also be seen as a brief aside by Gaiman—who, like the narrator and all creative people, can never completely control the artistic process.

“Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good.”

Searching for the link between his formative years and the middle-aged man he is, the narrator meditates on how time changes people’s perceptions of their own youth. It’s hard to judge what we’ve become if we can’t accurately remember how we started. Without a reliable compass to guide us through our youthful memories, we can feel lost—or simply misremember the past in ways that flatter us and hide what truly happened.

“I was not happy as a child, although from time to time I was content. I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.”

According to the narrator, there’s a kind of misery to growing up lonely and smart, but it’s lightened by the joys of reading and pursuing quieter hobbies. The narrator’s curiosity and imagination also lead him toward the encounters that will define his youth.

“Something came to me, and pleaded for love and help. It told me how I could make all the things like it happy. That they are simple creatures, and all any of them want is money, just money, and nothing more. Little tokens-of-work. If it had asked, I would have given them wisdom, or peace, perfect peace….”

Lettie and the narrator encounter a huge, tent-like creature that granted the request of an opal miner’s spirit to give money to those he’d ruined. The tent creature, misunderstanding human needs, begins placing money in people’s lives, money that chokes or strikes or makes them possessive. This strange being of immense power, who thinks so little of humans yet pities them, manages to interfere with people, making their lives worse instead of better. The scene is a subtle commentary on the arrogance of power.

“[…] I have understood what she was saying, in my dreams. In those dreams I spoke that language too, the first language, and I had dominion over the nature of all that was real. In my dream, it was the tongue of what is, and anything spoken in it becomes real, because nothing said in that language can be a lie. It is the most basic building brick of everything. In my dreams I have used that language to heal the sick and to fly; once I dreamed I kept a perfect little bed-and-breakfast by the seaside, and to everyone who came to stay with me I would say, in that tongue, ‘Be whole,’ and they would become whole, not be broken people, not any longer, because I had spoken the language of shaping.”

The narrator recalls a language so fundamental to life and reality that it creates things. It’s a power wielded by the Hempstocks, who live on the borders of multiple universes, maintain them, and keep them separated. To hear this language in use just once is enough to impart some of its power to a human. It’s a godlike language, the words of creation itself.

“I do not know why I did not ask an adult about it. I do not remember asking adults about anything, except as a last resort.”

The narrator has long since realized that his interests and view of the world, magical or otherwise, are “alien” to most people. His parents love him and give him the best care they can, but they never truly understand him. Something supernatural is stuck in his foot, but he knows adults won’t be able to help and may instead interfere. His parents might, in fact, forbid him from seeing Lettie, the one person who might be able to aid him.

“I wondered, as I wondered so often when I was that age, who I was, and what exactly was looking at the face in the mirror. If the face I was looking at wasn’t me, and I knew it wasn’t, because I would still be me whatever happened to my face, then what was me? And what was watching?”

Despite lacking answers, the narrator often ponders this type of enigma; his mind dares to search beyond the surface of things (which will prove important later, with Ursula’s arrival). He asks who he is in essence, what his purpose is, and what might be his destiny. He also wonders who the Hempstocks truly are beneath their own facades.

“I liked myths. They weren’t adult stories and they weren’t children’s stories. They were better than that. They just were. Adult stories never made sense, and they were so slow to start. They made me feel like there were secrets, Masonic, mythic secrets, to adulthood. Why didn’t adults want to read about Narnia, about secret islands and smugglers and dangerous fairies?”

Due to their youth, it’s easy for children to get lost in the fantastical, while adults are often marked by their ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Still, there’s a child inside every adult, someone who yearns for adventures and otherworldly experiences (if not for brief escapism). In meeting the Hempstocks, the narrator suddenly finds himself in a real-life fantasy, a situation that embodies the conflict between childlike perception and adult sensibility.

“Adults follow paths. Children explore.”

Where adults tend to rely on the tried-and-true, children are still experimenting with life, and sometimes end up knowing details about their homes that their parents never think to look into. This gives the narrator an advantage when escaping from his caregiver Ursula, but it also speaks to the mindset of childhood: Children put curiosity first and discovery foremost. If adults were willing to wander more than they do, they might recover some of the wonder of childhood.

“I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.”

The narrator does what many bright children do when they’re completely stuck: They read their way into a different world entirely, one with completely different problems, one whose characters are brave and capable. Sometimes, from within these books, ideas germinate that children can use to help them deal with real-life problems.

“He never hit me. He did not believe in hitting. He would tell us how his father had hit him, how his mother had chased him with a broom, how he was better than that. When he got angry enough to shout at me he would occasionally remind me that he did not hit me, as if to make me grateful. In the school stories I read, misbehavior often resulted in a caning, or the slipper, and then was forgiven and done, and I would sometimes envy those fictional children the cleanness of their lives.”

The narrator loves his father but fears his rage. To him, the intensity of the anger is worse than getting spanked, and this may be why he can’t fully trust his parents with his concerns. With his father entranced by Ursula, the boy has no leverage at all. He instead turns to the Hempstocks, who treat him kindly and know what to do about the Ursula creature.

“I cried then, cold and still damp, in that bedroom, cried with pain and anger and terror, cried safely in the knowledge that no one would come in and see me, that no one would tease me for crying, as they teased any boys at my school who were unwise enough to give way to tears.”

Trapped in a house with a monster whose efforts cause his father to nearly drown him, the narrator, scared and alone, becomes stronger by accepting that he must outwit the creature himself. His comment about being teased by other boys completes the circle of alienation that surrounds him: He has no friends, his parents are ensorcelled by a demonic presence, and his survival depends entirely on his own wits. These he has in abundance, reinforced by the extensive reading he’s done.

“Growing up, I took so many cues from books. They taught me most of what I knew about what people did, about how to behave. They were my teachers and my advisors. In books, boys climbed trees, so I climbed trees, sometimes very high, always scared of falling. In books, people climbed up and down drainpipes to get in and out of houses, so I climbed up and down drainpipes too.”

With no friends and only a thin connection to his parents, the narrator grows up by reading. Stories teach him how to be; they also teach him how to make use of the world, and he does so now, when his life may depend on it.

“I was a little thing that amused her. She was playing, just as I had seen Monster, the big orange tomcat, play with a mouse—letting it go, so that it would run, and then pouncing, and batting it down with a paw.”

The narrator realizes he has no chance against Ursula, an immensely superior power that seeks to amuse herself with his misery and eventual death at his father’s hands. At this point of the novel, the boy senses he’s doomed. Literally trapped in a dark and stormy night, he knows he’ll either die or find a solution.

“Ursula Monkton smiled, and the lightnings wreathed and writhed about her. She was power incarnate, standing in the crackling air. She was the storm, she was the lightning, she was the adult world with all its power and all its secrets and all its foolish casual cruelty.”

Even ancient gods can be petty. Ursula, ever proud of herself, manifests the very flaws to which mere humans are prone. Evil is cunning and dangerous, but in this case, unwise—and though it leaves trails of destruction, it can’t always outmaneuver thoughtful beings like the Hempstocks.

“‘You Hempstocks aren’t people,’ I said. ‘Are too.’ I shook my head. ‘I bet you don’t actually even look like that,’ I said. ‘Not really.’ Lettie shrugged. ‘Nobody actually looks like what they really are on the inside. You don’t. I don’t. People are much more complicated than that. It’s true of everybody.’”

The narrator reasons that much of what’s been happening around him is supernatural, and that, like Ursula, the Hempstocks are merely presenting themselves as humans. He’s touched on a fundamental truth about people: There’s a difference between one’s appearance and one’s inner life. Over time, people often lean toward their essential moods, and this communicates who they are to others. In the same way, the Hempstocks present themselves as kindly but ordinary: It’s their way of communicating to humans in a visual language they can understand.

“I’m going to tell you something important. Grown-ups don’t look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they’re big and thoughtless and they always know what they’re doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. The truth is, there aren’t any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.”

Lettie believes human adults are simply children who put up a good act. There’s truth in this, and the narrator needs to hear it so he can begin to defend himself against adults who are cruel because of their own fears. Knowing what scares others, including evil beings like Ursula, might save his life.

“I trusted Lettie, just as I had trusted her when we had gone in search of the flapping thing beneath the orange sky. I believed in her, and that meant I would come to no harm while I was with her. I knew it in the way I knew that grass was green, that roses had sharp, woody thorns, that breakfast cereal was sweet.”

Something essential about Lettie makes the narrator trust her. It’s so basic that it feels as real as the ordinary things he encounters each day, yet it’s invisible. Her character is inherently good, strong and caring, and her presence in his life—and the presence of all the Hempstocks—gives him a feeling of safety that he can turn to when his parents can’t protect him.

“Adults should not weep, I knew. They did not have mothers who would comfort them.”

The narrator instinctively touches on something important about adults: Crying won’t bring their parents to help them, as they’re expected to face their problems on their own. The boy doesn’t yet know that a good cry can help at any age, and adults are sometimes able to comfort themselves with their own tears. Still, adulthood can be lonely in ways much different from the loneliness of childhood.

“Lettie Hempstock looked like pale silk and candle flames. I wondered how I looked to her, in that place, and knew that even in a place that was nothing but knowledge that was the one thing I could not know. That if I looked inward I would see only infinite mirrors, staring into myself for eternity.”

Standing in a bucket of magical water, the narrator finds himself in an endless sea that contains all knowledge. He knows now that Lettie isn’t a human but something else, and realizes he can never see his own essence and doesn’t know how different from her he might be. It’s a climactic moment of revelation and transcendent awareness for the boy, a receiving of knowledge for his own hero’s journey.

“‘So you used to know everything?’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Everybody did. I told you. It’s nothing special, knowing how things work. And you really do have to give it all up if you want to play.’ ‘To play what?’ ‘This,’ she said. She waved at the house and the sky and the impossible full moon and the skeins and shawls and clusters of bright stars.”

The narrator learns that life is like a narrowing down of consciousness so that one can have an adventure. To know everything is to have nothing to do; perfection might become boring, and the Hempstocks dive back into the muck and mystery of a world where they can face problems and try to solve them. The narrator’s adventure is learning this truth and then returning to the game of an unknowable world.

“I do not miss childhood, but I miss the way I took pleasure in small things, even as greater things crumbled. I could not control the world I was in, could not walk away from things or people or moments that hurt, but I found joy in the things that made me happy.”

During childhood, people have little power but great sensitivity. Later, they acquire many strengths yet often lose sight of other things. Skills make life possible, but awareness makes it worthwhile. The narrator regrets the loss of sensitivity and wonder he once felt. The Hempstocks literally embody this sense of magic; for the narrator, their farm is the emblem of awe he felt as a young boy. 

“‘Nothing’s ever the same,’ she said. ‘Be it a second later or a hundred years. It’s always churning and roiling. And people change as much as oceans.’”

Old Mrs. Hempstock, who in reality is a queen of universes, reassures the narrator that Lettie hasn’t died and will be fine, if different, when next she walks the Earth. Just as the sea looks different each day but is still the same, Lettie may reappear in a different guise but still be Lettie.