Memory, Perception, and Reality Theme Analysis

The Ocean at the End of the Lane consists of the unnamed adult narrator’s recollection of events that happened over a few days of his child. As such, the book is naturally interested in what people remember and why. Over the course of these few days, the narrator experiences a number of supernatural events with his friend Lettie Hempstock—but when his adventure comes to an end, he mysteriously forgets everything that happened. However, when he returns as an adult to the Hempstocks’ farm, he just as mysteriously remembers what happened but forgets again upon leaving the farm. As the adult narrator explores his childhood memories, the novel examines the role that perception plays in what a person deems important or real, as well as how they go about remembering that event. Ultimately, the story makes the case that reality and memory are both incredibly subjective because they both hinge on a person’s individual way of seeing the world.

The narrator’s movements and thought processes through the prologue make it clear that memory is far more complicated than it seems, as his long-forgotten childhood memories bubble up seemingly out of nowhere. In the frame story, the narrator finds himself driving to the Hempstock farm without knowing why or where the farm is. He finds the farm as though by instinct, suggesting that memory is primal and even beyond understanding. As he gets to the end of the lane, speaks to Old Mrs. Hempstock, and then heads for the duck pond behind the barns (the “ocean” from the story’s title), the know-how to perform each action seems to suddenly burst forth from him. Then, it’s only on the bank of the ocean that the narrator is able to remember what happened decades ago, when he was seven. This speaks to the way in which seemingly forgotten memories can be remembered with the help of something external, such as returning to a place that was meaningful in one’s childhood.

In the main story, the young narrator is forced to confront the ways in which his unique perspective as a child influences how he understands what happens to him and those around him. As a child, the narrator is used to adults not taking him seriously. He understands that he can’t trust adults to believe anything he has to say, real or otherwise, so it doesn’t cross his mind to ask his parents for help when he coughs up the mysterious sixpence. The narrator also recognizes that he’s the only one in his family who sees things for the way they are: sinister and terrifying. But although he can sense as much, he still can’t fully understand what he sees. This is true both in terms of the supernatural events (which the Hempstock women understand but only cursorily explain to the narrator) and the more adult events that unfold around him. For example, the narrator witnesses his father having sex with the monster disguised as a human woman, Ursula, one night while his mother is out. While he doesn’t recognize what he’s seeing as sex, nor does he give any indication he even knows what sex is at this age, he still understands the implication of seeing them together: his father is now on Ursula’s side and is no longer remotely trustworthy. In this way, the novel makes the case that even though one’s understanding of something may be simplistic, this doesn’t mean that their read of the situation is wrong. Furthermore, the narrator also shows that one’s understanding can change as time goes on. As an adult, the narrator understands what he saw as a child, and this leap in understanding changes the memory for him.

All of this together shows that memory is unreliable and subject to change—but the novel takes this claim a step further when it introduces the magical concept of “snip and cut,” or “snipping” an event out of time and replacing it with a different version of events. Even though “snip and cut” is a supernatural phenomenon in the novel, it speaks to the way that memories can change or even disappear altogether over time. Old Mrs. Hempstock first uses this method to protect the narrator from his father on the night that the narrator’s father attempts to drown the narrator in the bathtub. She knows that cutting away the bathtub incident and the fight preceding it will mean that the narrator’s father won’t be upset with his son—and will therefore allow the narrator to stay the night with the Hempstocks, where he’ll be safe from Ursula. However, though Old Mrs. Hempstock gives the narrator the choice to forget, he chooses to remember the bathtub incident as he experienced it—another example of how people can remember the same event in entirely different ways.

In many ways, it’s impossible to tell what actually happened to the narrator, given the supernatural elements of the story and the fact that the adult narrator is telling the reader about an event that happened to him decades ago—and he’s describing events that even he didn’t remember until he stepped onto the Hempstock farm. However, the story suggests that the truth of what did or didn’t happen is ultimately less important than what the narrator gets out of sharing his story and remembering. Lettie ultimately sacrificed herself to the hunger birds (the vultures of the story’s supernatural universe) in order to save the narrator. Returning to the Hempstocks’ farm thus gives the narrator a tangible connection to his past and a chance to check on Lettie’s healing (Lettie can’t die, per se; she’s been healing in the “ocean” since her sacrifice). Memory may be fleeting and unreliable—after all, he immediately loses his memory of these visits and reverts to believing that Lettie is in Australia—but it’s impossible, the novel suggests, to fully erase the memory of one’s close, trusting relationship with another.