The Ocean at the End of the Lane: Prologue 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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.