The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Chapters IV - XI (October 2013)

[Terry]

This topic is for discussion of chapters IV to XI. Please don't post spoilers for subsequent chapters.

Ursula is the villain of this piece, but she spends most of here time in human form, as the babysitter. To what extent is Gaiman channeling widely held memories and fears of cruel carers, be they babysitters, stepmothers, wicked aunts, etc.?

At the end, we see that the creatures called to put and end to Ursula may be even more of a threat themselves. How does this make you feel? What do you think will happen?

[Peter]

Well, cosmic inhuman horrors can be scary, but they don't relate to day-to-day experience, and thus will never be entirely real. But everyone can relate to a cruel authority figure!

As for the Hunger Birds, topping Ursula's threat, well I reminded of this verse by mathematician Augustus De Morgan:

"Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on,
While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on."

[Silver]

I think that Gaiman draws a lot from fairy tale within this book (and perhaps in much of his writing in general) Letti Hempstock does seem to have a lot of the sort of fairy godmother aspect to her, pledged to protect the narrator. I also enjoyed the way in which the idea of a wormhole is given a sort of literal interpretation within this story.

I think that the hunger birds do represent the idea of the food chain so to speak, and no matter who or what you are there is also something else that can come and get you.

The narrator talks often about his own helpless feelings against adults, and how he looks up to adults, or is intimated by them and fears them, and the adults become helpless to Ursula, and thus in turn Ursula is helpless to the hunger birds.

Letti I think presents a sort of anomaly being that she is a child, and yet not a child as it is suggested that she has remained the age 11 for an indefinite period of time. I think this is in part what gives her her power, the childlike side of her allows her to interact with these otherworldly beings of which most adults are unaware of/no longer believe in, but because she is older than her years in some ways she has a confidence in herself and her own power that the narrator lacks. She does not think of herself as just a helpless kid.