The Ocean at the End of the Lane: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

When the narrator wakes, his parents are both gone. It’s a gray day. The narrator prays that Ursula is gone, but she’s waiting at the bottom of the stairs. She warns the narrator that if he tries to leave, she’ll lock him in his room and tell his parents he peed on the floor on purpose. The narrator eats fruit in his laboratory and then reads another of his mother’s old books. His father gets home earlier than usual, and the narrator watches from a tree as his father shows Ursula around the gardens. She laughs at his jokes and he touches her shoulder.

The narrator wants to run to his father, but he’s afraid his father will be angry. When he’s angry, the narrator’s father is terrifying. He shouts, though he doesn’t hit. He talks about how his father hit him as though to make the narrator thankful he doesn’t hit—but sometimes, the narrator thinks that violent punishments in his books seem clean and simple. The narrator finds a new perch when his father and Ursula move out of sight, and he watches his father give Ursula a bouquet of narcissi. The narrator thinks of the myth of Narcissus and how disappointed he was when he learned that a narcissus is “just a less impressive daffodil.” The narrator’s sister joins her father and Ursula. The narrator sees his father put a hand on Ursula’s bottom, but he thinks nothing of it.

The narrator reads another book until dinner. As he reads, he vows to run to the Hempstocks’ farm as soon as someone takes him off the property in the next few days. Ursula makes meatloaf for dinner, but the narrator refuses to eat it. His mother is at her meeting, so it’s just the narrator, his sister, his father, and Ursula. The narrator continues to refuse the meatloaf even though he’s so hungry it hurts, and blurts that he won’t eat anything Ursula made. Ursula sweetly insists that the narrator doesn’t need to apologize, and the narrator thinks her eyes look like rotting cloth. The narrator’s father grows angry and demands an explanation. When the narrator says that Ursula is a monster and a flea, his father leads him into the hallway.

The narrator’s father scolds the narrator, but the narrator refuses to apologize. He races upstairs to the bathroom, the only room with a locking door, and he locks himself in. His father bangs on the door and threatens to break it down. The narrator isn’t sure if his father can actually do this—closed bathroom doors mean people shouldn’t come in—but his father breaks the door off the frame and grabs the narrator’s arm. His father begins to run a cold bath and tells Ursula, in the doorway with the narrator’s sister, to close the door. The narrator is terrified. He has no idea what his father is going to do.

The narrator says he’ll apologize, but his father ignores him and turns off the tap. Then, he effortlessly picks up the narrator by the armpits. Realizing what’s going to happen, the narrator struggles in the moment before his father plunges him into the water. The narrator is horrified, first because he’s in a cold bath fully dressed, and then because he knows he’s going to die. He vows to live, so he flails and grabs onto his father’s tie. The narrator pulls until his father would have to put his own face in the tub to keep the narrator in the water. Suddenly, the narrator’s father straightens up, accuses his son of ruining his tie, and sends him to his room for the night.