Bad Memories In The Ocean At The End Of The Lane By Neil Gaiman

English 9 CP
31 May 2023
The Curse of Bad Memories
Growing up with many bad things happening to me I am not at all a stranger to the hurt after these bad memories happening. Much like me the narrator in the novel The Ocean at The End of The Lane by Neil Gaiman has a lot of bad memories, but the narrator deals with these problems with the help of the Hempstocs. His nice life is intruded by the evil Ursula Monkton and when she brings problems Old Mrs.Hempsock decides to wipe his bad memories. Unfortunately, this novel shows that you should forget bad memories because they can scar you mentally for your life, they can ruin relationships in your life and they can lead to bad things later in life
When people think of bad memories they see how hurtful

This is shown many times throughout the book for example one of the biggest things that affected the narrator is when the dad brought him into the bathroom and “he pushed further, pushing my head and shoulders beneath the chilly water, and the horror changed its nature. I thought I’m going to die”(61). The big thing that this is showing is that his dad drowned him and I feel like this would never be suitable for someone's mental health because you're being downed by what is supposed to be your role model and who you are classes with. To add on in this book a big thing that happens with the narrator is when he has a wormhole in his foot. This hole is a lot more complicated because it is a connection between Ursula's world. Because of this, the Hempstocks try to get it out of the narrator's foot, but the narrator is against that idea until he could feel it “ inside my flesh, making itself rigid, unpullable. I was not scared by this. It was just something that happened to people, like when the neighbor's cat, Misty, had worms”(45). this pain is something that sticks with people there whole life

This is shown in the book in many places but the main way this is shown is how all of the bad things that the narrator did to Ursula destroyed the narrator and the dad’s relationship. To explain this the narrator and the dad at the beginning of the book had a good relationship like they loved each other. The dad “had also given me a Best of Gilbert and Sullivan LP, to add to the two that I already had”(16). All that this is saying is that the dad would do thighs to make the narrator happy like getting him a book to add to his collection. But we see this change when Ursula joins the picture, and when she started to manipulate the dad. The first break in their relationship is shown at a family dinner where Ursula had cooked but the narrator had to tell his dad how bad she was so he told his “ father why I did not want to eat. ‘I won’t eat anything she made,’ I told him. ‘I don’t like her.’ ‘You will eat your food,’ said my father. ‘You will at least try it. And apologize to Miss Monkton”(59). This shows how the narrator and his dad started to get Into fights and this is not how people want to remember their childhood because they want to remember it as happy and having a nice home life. Finally, to conclude I see their relationship truly crumble when the narrator goes home after Ursula tells him that his dad and she are getting close and