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The mysterious, supernatural pond at the Hempstocks’ farm which Lettie calls her “ocean” symbolizes knowledge—specifically, a kind of knowledge that the novel suggests is unique to children. The narrator discovers this in no uncertain terms when Lettie plunges him into it to rescue him from supernatural vultures called hunger birds; in the water, he feels like he knows everything there is to know in the world. However, prior to this point, the nature of the ocean—its size, the fact that it looks like a normal duck pond, the fact that adults think it is just a pond—suggests that children like Lettie and the narrator, who are more willing to use their imaginations to invent complex fantasies, know more than the adults around them. Their imaginations allow them to see that things are almost always more than they might seem at first glance, a skill and a thought process that the novel suggests isn’t as accessible to adults.
The Ocean Quotes in The Ocean at the End of the Lane
The The Ocean at the End of the Lane quotes below all refer to the symbol of The Ocean. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Prologue
Quotes
If you’d asked me an hour before, I would have said no, I did not remember the way. I do not even think I would have remembered Lettie Hempstock’s name. But standing in that hallway, it was all coming back to me. Memories were waiting at the edges of things, beckoning to me. Had you told me that I was seven again, I might have half-believed you, for a moment.
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Chapter 10
Quotes
“Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren’t.”
I said, “People should be scared of Ursula Monkton.”
“P’raps. What do you think Ursula Monkton is scared of?”
“Dunno. Why do you think she’s scared of anything? She’s a grown-up, isn’t she? Grown-ups and monsters aren’t scared of things.”
“Oh, monsters are scared,” said Lettie. “That’s why they’re monsters.”
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Chapter 13
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Lettie Hempstock looked like pale silk and candle flames. I wondered how I looked to her, in that place, and knew that even in a place that was nothing but knowledge that was the one thing I could not know. That if I looked inward I would see only infinite mirrors, staring into myself for eternity.
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Chapter 14
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I said, “Will she be the same?”
The old woman guffawed, as if I had said the funniest thing in the universe. “Nothing’s ever the same,” she said. “Be it a second later or a hundred years. It’s always churning and roiling. And people change as much as oceans.”
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Epilogue
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Old Mrs. Hempstock shrugged. “What you remembered? Probably. More or less. Different people remember things differently, and you’ll not get any two people to remember anything the same, whether they were there or not. You stand two of you lot next to each other, and you could be continents away for all it means anything.”
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The Ocean Symbol Timeline in The Ocean at the End of the Lane
The timeline below shows where the symbol The Ocean appears in The Ocean at the End of the Lane. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Prologue
...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...
(full context)
...that Lettie went to Australia. Suddenly, the narrator remembers that she called the pond her “ocean”—and having remembered this, he suddenly remembers everything.
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Chapter 1
...narrator recalls everything while sitting next to the pond that Lettie convinced him was an ocean, he knows that he won’t remember this for long.
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Chapter 2
...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...
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...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.
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Chapter 8
...make Ursula a new door or have Old Mrs. Hempstock send Ursula back across the ocean. Ursula angrily demands the narrator, whom she insists she owns. Ursula points out that the...
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Chapter 10
...he insists on going with Lettie. Lettie looks unhappy and suggests they go to the ocean. On the bench, the narrator says that the Hempstocks aren’t people, but Lettie shrugs and...
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...Mrs. Hempstock. The narrator wonders if this is true, and he points out that Lettie’s ocean is just a pond. Lettie just says that she knows what Ursula is afraid of—and...
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Chapter 13
...water. She apologizes for the wait; Old Mrs. Hempstock had to help her get the ocean into the bucket. Old Mrs. Hempstock is napping now. The water in the bucket glows...
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...be a secret to breathing underwater. Then, he thinks that he knows everything. As the ocean flows into the narrator, it “fill[s] the entire universe, from Egg to Rose”—and the narrator...
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The narrator thinks that there’s an ocean running under the entire universe, but it can fit in a bucket if Old Mrs....
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...the narrator out of the pond, and he discovers that his clothes are dry. The ocean is back in the pond, and the narrator no longer knows everything—but he knows that...
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Chapter 14
...to Lettie. He can no longer see the other side of the pond—it’s a vast ocean. The water glows. Old Mrs. Hempstock assures the narrator that neither he nor the hunger...
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Chapter 15
...that believes Lettie is dead, but Ginnie retorts that Lettie is just badly hurt. The ocean might not ever give her back, but they can hope. A minute later, the narrator...
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...Hempstock farm unless Lettie is there, and he thinks that Australia is far across the ocean. A part of him seems to remember that something else happened, but those memories are...
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