The Ocean At The End Of The Lane Analysis

Neil Gaiman is a Hugo award winning British author of short stories, graphic novels, comic books, audio titles and films. Some of his notable works include ‘Stardust’, ‘Neverwhere’, ‘Good Omens’, ‘The Sandman’ series of graphic novels, etc.
‘The Ocean At The End of The Lane’ written by Neil Gaiman, is a book that is spoken through a child’s perspective, of the world around him.
The book deals with the unstable emotions that the protagonist, a child goes through that eventually leads to a disconnect between his childhood and adulthood. It talks about loneliness, desperation and confusion that anyone who has no guide to ease them into the world goes through. It also talks greatly about the human mind’s ability to repress the memories that it finds too traumatic to deal with.
The plot starts out simple, an unnamed protagonist attending a funeral in his childhood hometown. He then visits the home that he and his sister grew up in, bringing back memories of a little girl named Lettie Hempstock who lived at the end of the lane, in the Hempstocks’ farmhouse, with her mother and grandmother. Lettie used to claim that the pond behind her house was an ocean. She was his only friend.
The Hempstocks are recurring characters in most of Gaiman’s literature.
The scene then changes to the narrator’s childhood, a lonely one at it. “I lay on the bed and lost myself in stories,” he says, “I liked that. Books were safer than other people anyway.”
The main narrative starts as he recalls a