Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Childhood vs. Adulthood
Memory, Perception, and Reality
Knowledge and Identity
Fear, Bravery, and Friendship
Summary
Analysis
The narrator explains that he wasn’t a happy child, though he was “content” sometimes. He reads more than anything else. One afternoon, the narrator’s parents call him into their bedroom to say that they’re no longer doing well financially. They say that everyone will make sacrifices and that the narrator will sacrifice his bedroom. The narrator is sad: his parents put in a small sink in his room just for him, and at night, the narrator can crack the door to let in light to read by.
The narrator’s bedroom, with its miniature sink, represents childish innocence—but specifically, it symbolizes the care that he once received from his parents. It’s nothing to them to ask him to give up the one place that makes him feel safe and cared for, which again speaks to how disaffected and absent they are from their son’s life.
Themes
The narrator’s sister’s bedroom isn’t awful; it’s big and has a window conveniently situated so the narrator can climb onto the balcony. However, the narrator and his sister fight about whether the door should be open or closed at night. The narrator’s mother creates a chart for them to alternate, and the narrator is terrified every night the door is closed. The family rents the narrator’s bedroom to characters who, to the narrator, all seem suspicious and like interlopers. The opal miner is the current renter. He’s South African, though he mined opals in Australia. He gives the narrator and his sister each an opal. The narrator’s sister likes the opal miner, but the narrator can’t forgive him for killing Fluffy.
Because the narrator feels so strongly connected to his bedroom and the safety he felt there, having these adults staying in it feels like a personal affront and perhaps even a violation. It impresses upon the narrator yet again that since he’s a child, he can’t control his world. Adults can come as they please, sleep in his bed, and use his child-size sink—while he has to sleep in his sister’s bedroom and be terrified in order to accommodate them.
Themes
On the first day of the spring holidays, the narrator wakes up early. He dresses and finds his father in the kitchen. The narrator asks for his SMASH! comic, which his father brings home on Friday nights. The narrator’s father says it’s in the car and offers the narrator toast first. As the narrator’s father toasts bread in the grill, the narrator asks for toast that isn’t burnt, steps into the driveway, looks around, and comes back inside. The car isn’t in the driveway. The phone rings and the narrator’s father answers it. While he’s busy, the toast starts to burn under the grill.
The burnt toast is another piece of evidence as to how distant and uncaring the narrator’s parents are. It may seem insignificant, but seeing his father answer the phone instead of attending to the toast impresses upon the narrator that he’s not as important as whatever adult is calling. The missing comic makes this seem even more pronounced—the narrator can’t rely on his father for much.
Themes
The narrator’s father returns with news that the police called: someone stole the car, and it’s been found at the bottom of the lane. He hurriedly rescues the toast, puts peanut butter on the burnt side, and leads the narrator out. The narrator doesn’t eat his toast. As a police car drives up, the narrator wishes that his father would buy normal white bread instead of embarrassing brown bread. The officer invites the narrator and his father into the car, and they ride down the lane. The officer insists that it must be local kids who stole the car and comments that it’s odd that they left it at the bottom of the lane.
The way the narrator describes his father’s bread choices offers more possible explanations for why the narrator is so alone: it’s possible that the bread marks him as an outsider at school. Meanwhile, the officer’s analysis of what happened to the car suggests that as far as he’s concerned, kids are beyond trying to understand—while their actions sometimes make sense and are predictable, it’s not worth trying to make sense of their motivations.
Themes
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The police car comes upon the white Mini, sunk into the mud. The narrator, his father, and the officer get out and as the narrator’s father unlocks the car, he comments that there’s something in the backseat. He reaches back to pull the blue blanket off the “thing” in the backseat. The narrator knows his comic is there, so he looks into the car and sees the “thing,” which he believes is an “it” rather than a “him.” The narrator explains that despite his frequent nightmares, he managed to persuade his parents to take him to Madame Tussauds waxworks in London. The exhibits didn’t look alive—the only scary part was the plaques that all said that people murdered their families to sell the bodies to “anatomy.” Though the narrator doesn’t know what anatomy is, he knows it makes people kill their children.
Describing the person (the “him”) in the backseat as an “it” is a way for the narrator to try to dehumanize the person to make him less scary. If he can convince himself he’s not scaring at a dead person and is instead staring at a waxwork, this incident is much easier to deal with. His description of visiting the wax museum shows a more sinister angle to this: because the narrator doesn’t understand what anatomy is and doesn’t come up with a way to make this less scary, he sees the study of anatomy only as a motivator for murder—and not actually a quest for knowledge in its own right.
Themes
The “it” in the backseat looks like the opal miner but, like the waxworks, it isn’t convincing. It’s dressed in a suit with a ruffled shirt, and its face is bright red. The narrator can see his comic too. The officer sends the narrator away, but the narrator stares. He can see a garden hose running from the exhaust pipe to the window, held in place with mud. The narrator bites into his toast and thinks of how his father always insists that burnt toast is good. When the narrator is an adult, his father confesses that he doesn’t actually like burnt toast, which makes the narrator’s childhood feel like a lie. The officer invites the narrator to sit in his car again, but a girl appears and offers to take the narrator back to the farmhouse.
Again, the narrator is clearly trying to make this as easy to deal with as possible: the opal miner committed suicide in the car, but this fact is a lot for the young narrator to deal with. Again, it’s easier to believe that he’s staring at a waxwork and not actually a dead body. The narrator’s aside about his father’s eventual toast confession shows how easy it is to change how someone thinks of their childhood. All it takes is admitting one lie like this to make all of one’s childhood memories seem questionable.
Themes
The narrator informs the girl that there’s a dead man in the car. The girl explains that the opal miner knew that no one would find him here, and she offers the narrator fresh milk from a cow. At the farm, they stop at a barn where an old woman is milking a cow with a machine. The old woman gives the narrator a fresh cup of rich, warm milk. Suddenly, the old woman says that there’s more of “them” coming, so the girl should take the narrator to the kitchen for breakfast. The girl introduces herself as Lettie Hempstock, leads the narrator into the kitchen, and gives him porridge with jam. The narrator eats happily.
All the food that the narrator receives here is nutritious, filling, and exciting—a stark contrast to the meals he gets at home. This helps him decide to trust the Hempstock women since, unlike his parents, they clearly care about him. It’s significant that the narrator is disinterested in the fact that Lettie and this woman seem to know what’s going on up the road without being there. This suggests that they have some method of seeing or interpreting that isn’t available to someone like the narrator, though what differentiates the narrator from these women isn’t yet clear.
Themes
A stout woman enters the kitchen and announces that there will be five officers for tea soon. When Lettie hesitates at the cupboard, the woman confirms that they will indeed need six mugs—the doctor will come too. She then sighs that they missed the note in the opal miner’s breast pocket. When Lettie asks what it says, the woman tells Lettie to read it herself. The narrator figures that this woman is Lettie’s mother—she looks like she has to be a mother to someone. According to the woman, the note says that the opal miner took all the money his friends gave him to bank in England and lost it gambling. Lettie insists that he didn’t write that; the man asked for forgiveness.
Again, Lettie and this woman are somehow able to see all the way up the lane to the police investigating the opal miner’s suicide and are even able to somehow read his suicide note. They must have access to other ways of knowing and seeing—likely supernatural ones. However, what’s more interesting is the narrator’s lack of curiosity about their abilities. Accepting this as normal may simply be a result of the narrator’s loneliness (these women do seem to care about him, after all), or he may be more willing to accept the supernatural as real given his love of fantasy books.
Themes
The woman turns to the narrator and introduces herself as Mrs. Hempstock, Lettie’s mother. The woman in the barn is Old Mrs. Hempstock, and this is Hempstock Farm. The farm is the oldest in the area and is even in the Domesday Book. The narrator has questions but doesn’t ask any of them. Lettie announces that she’s nudged an officer to look in the opal miner’s breast pocket. Mrs. Hempstock suggests that Lettie take the narrator to the pond. Lettie huffs that it’s her “ocean” and leads the narrator outside, assuring him that they’re heading for a real ocean. They finally reach a duck pond with a dead fish floating on the surface. The narrator insists that it’s just a pond, but Lettie insists that the Hempstocks came across this ocean from “the old country” when she was a baby.
The Domesday Book was a survey taken by King William the Conqueror in 1086 that noted all the farms and people in England. The Hempstocks’ farm’s inclusion in the Domesday Book therefore makes it clear that it’s been around a long time, which makes the narrator think that the farm is a product of the real, mortal world. However, Lettie’s insistence that her family came across the “ocean”—the pond—when she was a baby suggests that there’s more to the farm than meets the eye. The narrator’s unwillingness to believe that the pond is an ocean speaks to his desire to make what he’s seeing make sense—and thus, he must believe all of this follows normal rules of how things work.
Themes
Lettie fetches a net and pulls the fish out as the narrator tries to argue with Lettie’s origin story—he insists that the farm is in the Domesday Book. Lettie just agrees, somehow procures a knife, and cuts into the belly of the fish. She extracts a sixpence and hands it to the narrator, saying that this is what killed the fish. They agree that this isn’t good and then return to the kitchen, where the narrator’s father is waiting. His father thanks the Hempstock women for taking care of the narrator, and the police officer drives the narrator and his father back to the house. The narrator’s father suggests that the narrator not talk about what happened, but the narrator has no interest in talking—he' made a friend. The narrator and his father discuss whether an ocean can be the size of a pond, but according to his father, this is impossible.
Though the narrator doesn’t acknowledge the possibility, it’s possible that Hempstock Farm could be both supernatural and in the Domesday Book. The Hempstock women are clearly abnormal or supernatural in some way, so seemingly anything is possible. It’s telling, though, that the narrator only fixates on the fact that he made a friend. More important than trying to figure out how Hempstock farm works is the fact that he met a person who takes him seriously, treats him kindly, and gives him gifts.
Themes
