What is the true difference between a child’s mind and an adult’s? The Ocean at the End of the Lane is one such novel that entertains this thought. The story is a dark fantasy about a man reminiscing about his mysterious past, which is bound to have many themes that shed light on the human condition and the unknowns of the world. The theme that is the most pronounced throughout, is the differences and connections between adulthood and childhood. The theme and the novel coincide with one another. Wherever the book exists, so does the theme. If this theme evaporates, so does the story because it is so integral to the plot. Childhood is a major component of The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman which intertwines the story with wonderment and confusion.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane begins with a grown man, that also narrates the book, who has traveled back to his childhood town for a funeral. Naturally, this sends the man, who is never named throughout the book, spiraling down a staircase of memories he has somehow locked away in his own mind. As he gets closer and closer to the places that marked his childhood, he begins remembering more and more. As the narrator states within the beginning of the story, “Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet, but they are never lost for good” (Gaiman, 5). When the narrator says this, he is referring to the