The Ocean at the End of the Lane Themes

Memory is something that revels in ambiguity—so if two people experience the same moment, they will both have two very different opinions of how things really went down. So for our purposes in Th...

You can't really have a story involving supernatural phenomena without having a healthy dose of fear mixed in. We fear the unknown, after all, because if we aren't familiar with it we can't know wh...

Isolation, in and of itself, does not necessarily carry a positive or negative connotation. It can be a boon when you're seeking solitude, or it can be a lonely existence if it's not something soug...

In The Ocean at the End of the Lane, it's possible for someone to die but then not be dead, and mortality is a subject that gets discussed, regardless of the amount of leeway it's given. The poor k...

Gaiman really likes to explore the idea of time and it's impact on people in two ways: The first is showing how the passage of time takes a toll on all that is beautiful and pure. Children unfortun...

The supernatural is something that appeals to a lot of people—who doesn't like wondering if ghosts exist, or whether vampires sparkle in sunlight. (They obviously don't. Pshaw.). But what makes T...

Sometimes in The Ocean at the End of the Lane the magical element isn't so much a case of the supernatural world in action, or a millennia of accumulated knowledge and wisdom—sometimes it's just...

The Ocean at the End of the Lane has a pretty neat take on what wisdom and knowledge can confer. A lot of our story deals with what life would be like if we knew more than we do about life, the uni...