The Ebb and Flow of Memories: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

My childhood memories mainly consist of me being somewhere, eating something.

The ebb and flow of memories at The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel by Neil Gaiman

Mild spoilers ahead...

Where does your childhood memory start? For Neil Gaiman's unnamed protagonist, he recalls the empty seats at his seventh birthday party. As I would have done, he crawls upstairs to escape into some C.S. Lewis adventures, "Books were safer than other people anyway." Reminds me of my own seventh birthday party. My friends clamored to sit next to my best friend instead of the birthday girl. I felt pretty bummed, I wanted to sit next to my best friend too. I suspect that Gaiman did not name his protagonist and drew on some of his grim childhood experiences when writing this book, because he initially wrote this work as a short story dedicated to his wife, the quirky artist/singer Amanda Palmer.

It took me a while to understand that birthday candles are not always yours to blow...

If you are any familiar with Gaiman's work like Coraline and American Gods, you would know how effortlessly he threads dreamlike fantasy into the seemingly everyday. The result can be rather unsettling, especially since the enemies in The Ocean at the End of the Lane hit close to home, literally. A sinister power manifests itself as the unwelcome strangers in the protagonist's house who make his life miserable, like the suicidal gambler who steals his father's car, and a pretty nanny who seduces his father and wins his younger sister's affection.

With his family turned against him, the protagonist runs away and receives shelter in the warm abode of the magical Hempstock family. Grandma, Mother, and (a girl his age) Lettie Hempstock are all strong-willed and kind. They protect him from evil entities and help him find his way while he tries to adjust to big changes in his life. Lettie Hempstock is particularly sweet, though the protagonist finds her quite eccentric for insisting that the small pond by the Hempstock farm is an "ocean." An ocean, the protagonist later finds out, that is much like the tremendous yet fleeting feeling you get when you wake up from a dream where everything suddenly makes sense...but then quickly forget.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane reminds me a lot of Pan's Labyrinth, because in both, I feel like the stories can be interpreted as protagonists trying to deal with horrific incidences through fairytale-like magic. War or threatening strangers have destabilized their sense of belonging, so they use magic to forge a new story, a new reality, and a new identity. Hence, the power of myth and Gaiman's craft as a storyteller.

The way the story unfolds through the hazy lens of the adult protagonist slowly remembering his hurtful past, really made me feel as though I was reliving a long-lost memory. I especially love Gaiman's portrayal of adults in his book. He shows that all adults, even the monsters that haunt the protagonist, actually share similar uncertainties and fears. Their actions have consequences that they did not intend and cannot control. As Lettie explains, “Grown-ups don't look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they're big and thoughtless and they always know what they're doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Truth is, there aren't any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.”

The adult protagonist reflects on his rather drab life until now, about his divorce, his children who he never really sees, his job, a recent funeral... he wonders why the ocean brought him back to remember everything.

"Why did she bring me here?"
"I think she wanted to know if you were worth it," the old woman said.
[Long pause...] "Did I pass?"
The face of the old woman was unreadable in the gathering dusk.
"You don't pass or fail at being a person, dear."

So when work is hard, an experiment doesn't work, someone I love has hurt me or vice versa... I'll look back on my rich childhood memories, remember the sacrifices other people have made for me to have a better life, and realize that nobody else has had the same experiences I have had. Nobody on earth can judge my life, not even me. And so I get up and keep going, leaving behind those memories buried in the recesses of my mind until I need them again.