Book : The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Gaiman Neil - Research Paper Example

The scene changes to a walk by the narrator down the country lane to a farmhouse and spends critical moments of childhood memories. The imagination of an existing Ocean but just a duck pond. This revelation of how small it is struck him. The revelation of the existence of three women who lived in the farmhouse gives a porthole to a different world.

These were little Hempstead, her mother, and her grandmother. The saddening scene of an accident caused by a stolen family car triggers this. The victim of the accident is a boy whose pet kitten and bedroom are run over. The boy who is without friends, shy, and likes reading books ends up befriending Lettie. Lettie helps him recover from the mundane fears and terrors of ordinary childhood. This brings a transformation from the fears and terrors brought by suffering parents and financial constraints to life that has little sense of that view.

“The magic comes from a fish in the pond in the name of Ursula.” (Gaiman 65)The malign entity was triggered by a sixpence from the fish’s gut. Ursula comes to the boy’s house as the worst kind of nanny. She is characterized by a changing attitude that is kind and good to the other family members but harsh with the boy. The nanny also influences the father to give harsh and bullying conditions to the boy like holding the boy's head in the water. This creates two scenes that are horrifying but differ in magnitude.

The horror resulting from normal childhood and that which is brought out by the presence of Ursula Monkton. This is the comparison of the terror caused by the supernatural and that caused by the bizarre actions of those close to us. There is a fluidity of fears in childhood that is combined with the mainstay of fairy tales. When this is combined with other fiction that are relevant for the kids, it makes a fantastic foundation for the book “The Ocean at the End of the Lane.”The story is proud from the vantage point of 7 and a different perspective of a middle-aged man looking back the history lane at the seminal points attached to his life. This gives it a skillful and beautiful approach to sending the message.