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 says that “it” was just a small duck pond. But according to Lettie Hempstock, it’s an ocean and they came across the ocean from the old country. Lettie’s mother, Mrs. Hempstock, always said that Lettie was misremembering—the old country sank long ago. Old Mrs. Hempstock, meanwhile, insisted that both her daughter and granddaughter were wrong: the place that sank wasn’t the “really old country,” which blew up.
This introduction makes one of the novel’s main points very plain: that different people can see and remember the same thing in entirely different ways. Meanwhile, the bizarre differences in how the narrator and the Hempstocks see this mysterious body of water (whether it’s a pond or an ocean), sets up the story as one concerned with the supernatural—something that mortals, like the narrator, may have an even harder time interpreting.
Themes
The narrator is dressed in a black suit with shiny black shoes. Normally he’d feel uncomfortable like this, but today, the clothes are comforting. Earlier, he spoke at the service. With an hour to kill, he got in his car to drive. Now, he meanders along Sussex country roads that he barely remembers. He makes several turns and realizes where he’s going: a house that hasn’t existed for decades. Curious, the narrator keeps going until he reaches the place where the old house sat. The narrator lived there from age five to 12, at which point his parents knocked it down and built the new house at the bottom of the garden. They sold the new house 30 years ago. The narrator pulls into the drive and stares at the house.
Given the narrator’s clothing and the mention of speaking at a service, it seems he’s just attended a funeral. That the narrator finds himself heading for his childhood home when he insists he barely remembers the way there suggests that some memories, particularly those that are important from childhood, remain with a person forever. While people might seem to forget them in difficult times (such as those surrounding a funeral), high emotions may trigger those memories and make them easier to access.
Themes
Finally, the narrator backs out of the drive. He knows he needs to head back to his sister’s house to talk to people about his failed marriage, the fact that he’s still single, his absent adult children, his work as an artist (which he struggles to talk about), and the dead. The lane used to be narrow, but now, it’s paved and separates two huge housing developments. Gradually, the street turns into a single-lane dirt road. As the narrator drives and the vegetation on each side gets wilder, he feels like he’s driving back in time. He passes Caraway Farm where, at age 16, the narrator kissed a girl named Callie. The lane turns into a dirt track and the narrator comes upon the brick farmhouse where the Hempstocks lived.
The way that the narrator describes his adult life suggests that he’s not entirely thrilled with adulthood and the kind of small talk he’s obligated to make. The mention of the newly paved lane and the new housing developments implies that just as the narrator has grown up, so has the lane—it’s gone from what he implies was wilderness and farmland to being a neat suburb. These similarities between the narrator and the lane he grew up on make it clear that this place is an important part of who the narrator is, and it might help him remember more of his childhood.
Themes
The narrator thinks it’s unlikely, but he wonders if the Hempstocks still live here. He parks and knocks on the door, which isn’t closed and swings open. He feels like he was here a long time ago. The narrator calls into the hallway and is about to turn away when an old woman with long, gray hair comes into the hallway. He greets her as Mrs. Hempstock, reminds her that he was here when he was seven or eight, and remembers that she gave him milk from the cows. The narrator suddenly apologizes—it must’ve been this woman’s mother, Old Mrs. Hempstock, who gave him the milk. The younger Mrs. Hempstock used to be stout, but now, she’s thin like her mother was.
The narrator believes that just as everything else on the lane has changed, the Hempstocks must also have changed in the last several decades. It’s telling that the narrator believes this woman is the younger Mrs. Hempstock when she so resembles Old Mrs. Hempstock. Though the novel doesn’t confirm or deny the narrator’s assessment, it’s possible that since he believes everything should change, that’s what he sees—when his initial assessment may be correct.
Themes
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Mrs. Hempstock asks if the narrator is here to see Lettie and notes that Lettie isn’t here. She offers the narrator tea, but he asks if he can see the duck pond first, which confuses Mrs. Hempstock. The narrator doesn’t remember what Lettie called the body of water, but she never called it a duck pond. Mrs. Hempstock points the narrator around the side of the house, and the narrator surprises himself when he realizes he knows the way. An hour ago, he thinks he couldn’t remember Lettie’s name. He winds through the farmyard to the pond, which is smaller than he remembered.
The narrator consistently observes that things look smaller than he remembers. This forces him to confront how much time has passed—and how much he’s changed since he was a small child. His new recollections again suggest that the Hempstock farm is a trigger of sorts for buried memories—which would suggest that this is an important location to the narrator’s childhood.
Themes
The narrator sits on the bench, tosses nuts into the pond, and tries to remember what Lettie used to call this body of water. He remembers that Lettie was 11 years old, and since they met after “the bad birthday party,” the narrator would’ve been seven. He wonders if they pushed each other into the pond and remembers that Lettie went to Australia. Suddenly, the narrator remembers that she called the pond her “ocean”—and having remembered this, he suddenly remembers everything.
Remembering what Lettie called the pond is what allows the narrator to remember everything else. Thus, the novel begins to suggest that if a person is able to name something correctly, it’s easier to gather information about it and to make sense of one’s world. As the narrator remembers “everything,” his world will start to make more sense.
Themes
