History Literature / TheOceanAtTheEndOfTheLane

* BerserkButton: [[spoiler:The hunger birds accidentally harming Lettie while trying to eat the protagonist's heart]] serves as one for Old Mrs. Hempstock, making her so angry she scares the ''hunger birds''.
* BewareTheNiceOnes: You REALLY don't want to get on the bad side of the Hempstock women. They'll feed you, clean you, and treat you like a member of the family if you're in their good graces. Get in their way, and they'll sic horrifying [[EldritchAbomination Eldritch Abominations]] on you.

* TheLoad: The narrator doesn't directly influence the plot. He doesn't instigate it and he's not instrumental to resolving it. He just hangs along and tries to stay alive long enough to be rescued.

[[quoteright:226:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/oceanattheendofthelane_1379.jpg]]

* AdultFear: Your spouse will start cheating on you with an attractive younger person, who will, in turn, start mistreating your children. Although it's told from a child's perspective, and among many more immediate threats, part of what makes Ursula Monkton so horrifying is that she can make the narrator's father do terrible things, possibly [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane without any overt mind control at all]].

->''It was only a duck pond, out at the back of the farm. It wasn't very big.''

->''Lettie Hempstock said it was an ocean, but I knew that was silly. She said that they'd come here across the ocean from the old country.''

->''Her mother said that Lettie didn't remember it properly, and it was a long time ago, and anyway, the old country had sunk.''

->''Old Mrs. Hempstock, Lettie's grandmother, said they were both wrong, and that the place that had sunk wasn't the ''really'' old country. She said she could remember the really old country.''

->''She said the really old country had blown up.''

* ArmorPiercingQuestion: [[spoiler: "Does it make you feel big to make a little boy cry?"]]

* BerserkButton: [[spoiler: The hunger birds accidentally harming Lettie while trying to eat the protagonist's heart]] serves as one for Old Mrs. Hempstock, making her so angry she scares the ''hunger birds''.

* BigGood: The three Hempstocks as a whole, but particularly Old Mrs. Hempstock. They see it as their mission to shoo off "fleas" (otherwise known by others as [[EldritchAbomination Eldritch Abominations]]) back to where they came from, both to keep them from hurting humanity, and also [[spoiler: to keep them from attracting the hunger birds.]]
* BittersweetEnding: The EldritchAbomination that's been haunting the narrator is defeated, but [[spoiler: the hunger birds try to devour the narrator's heart, forcing Lettie to sacrifice herself. She's not technically dead, but she's been healing for over forty years and still isn't well enough to talk. The narrator can only remember tiny fragments of what had really happened, except when he's visiting the ocean.]]

* CatsAreMagic: The cat the narrator finds isn't a normal cat. [[spoiler:For one thing, it's still alive after forty years.]] Though that could be because the cat is normal, but [[spoiler: time doesn't pass the same way on Hempstock land.]]

* ChekhovsGun: The pond, the kitten [[spoiler: which was named Ocean]].
* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: [[spoiler: Lettie gives Ursula every chance to surrender and do the right thing. And Ursula at one point seems to agree, only to attempt a double-cross. Fortunately, Lettie was GenreSavvy enough to see it coming.]]

* DidYouJustRomanceCthulhu?: [[spoiler:A HumanoidAbomination has sex with the narrator's father]].

* DoNotTauntCthulhu: [[spoiler: The hunger birds attack Lettie, causing Old Mrs. Hempstock to reveal her true form.]] She questions their actions, but they openly defy her until she notes exactly what she can do to them, at which point they back off immediately and begin begging for mercy.

** When the opal miner first arrives at the narrator's house, he runs over the boy's kitten and gives him a tomcat named [[MeaningfulName (appropriately)]] Monster. [[spoiler: He later commits suicide in a car at the edge of the narrator's and Hempstock's property, where the barrier between worlds is thinnest, which attracts the attention of a "flea," which leads to a [[EldritchAbomination literal monster]] getting into the boy's house.]]
** Almost impossible to notice without a second reading, but the narrator expresses in the first few pages that [[spoiler:he produces art sometimes to fill a hole in him. Turns out this hole is more than a methaphor]].

* AFormYouAreComfortableWith: Ursula (who actually looks like a mass of rotten gray cloth), Lettie (who actually looks like a form made of silk the color of frost illuminated by countless tiny flames) and presumably her mother and grandmother (Ginnie always appears human, and Old Mrs. Hempstock only partially reveals herself [[spoiler: when the hunger birds almost kill Lettie]] as a woman whose hair and clothes shine so bright the protagonist compares her to burning magnesium). It's also implied that everyone's true self looks very different from their physical form.

** [[spoiler: When the hunger birds want to eat the protagonist's heart but are prevented from doing so, they spitefully start devouring Earth instead. This is enough to get the protagonist to leave the safety of the Hempstock farm, knowing full well it meant his death.]]

* IKnowYourTrueName: Never specifically comes into play, but Ursula chides Lettie for trying to seal her without knowing her name and Lettie goes to a lot of trouble to find it out. She finally does find out what Ursula's real name is [[spoiler: Skarthach of the Keep]] and is able to make Ursula behave herself more after she figures this out.

* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: Skarthach's last words: "I never made any of them do anything." A last mental barb at the narrator? Or was a father really willing to [[spoiler: drown his son]] for a pretty smile?

** References are made to two previous times the Hempstocks had to shoo "fleas" off of Earth, one in Cromwell's time with a creature that looked rather like a giant frog who made people lonely, and one in "Red Rufus's Time" (Red Rufus being [[TheHouseOfNormandy King William II]]) who made people's dreams come true.

* OnePersonBirthdayParty: The narrator suffers one at the beginning of the novel. Inverted in that he doesn't really mind.

* PrimalScene: The narrator witnesses [[spoiler: his father having sex with Ursula Monkton]], though he doesn't understand what he's seeing, being seven years old at the time.
* RealityWarper: Whereas Lettie and Ginnie's powers "merely" seem to work along the lines of those you'd expect from, perhaps, a very powerful witch, Old Mrs. Hempstock seems to be more or less omnipotent. [[spoiler: The eldritch abominations who ''eat'' other eldritch abominations, and are in the middle of the process of ''tearing down our universe in a fit of spite'', stop in their tracks and begin to ''grovel'' when they realize she's angry.]]
* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: All of the Hempstocks are older then they look... much, much older. [[spoiler: Old Mrs. Hempstock is said to remember the Big Bang.]]

* SharedUniverse: WordOfGod says that Liza Hempstock from Literature/TheGraveyardBook is related to the Hempstocks in this novel.

* EasilyForgiven: Subverted; the only reason the narrator and his father get along as adults is because [[spoiler:he keeps forgetting that his father tried to drown him.]] Of course, given [[RealityWarper: Granny's actions, that might not have actually happened]].

* EasilyForgiven: Subverted; the only reason the narrator and his father get along as adults is because [[spoiler:he keeps forgetting that his father tried to drown him.]]

'''''The Ocean at the End of the Lane''''' is a 2013 dark fantasy book by Creator/NeilGaiman.

* SharedUniverse: WordOfGod says yes Liza Hempstock from Literature/TheGraveYardBook is related to the Hempstocks in this novel.

* DidYouJustRomanceCthulhu?: [[spoiler: A HumanoidAbomination has sex with the narrator's father]].

* BlondesAreEvil: Ursula Monkton is stated as having short blonde hair.

* ChekhovsGun: The pond, the kitten.

* ColorMotif: The flea, in all its forms, has a predominately pink and beige colouration, with variations (such as platinum-blonde hair). Disturbingly and inexplicably, the same colours dominate the narrator's parents' bedroom.

-->''It was only a duck pond, out at the back of the farm. It wasn't very big.''

-->''Lettie Hempstock said it was an ocean, but I knew that was silly. She said that they'd come here across the ocean from the old country.''

-->''Her mother said that Lettie didn't remember it properly, and it was a long time ago, and anyway, the old country had sunk.''

-->''Old Mrs. Hempstock, Lettie's grandmother, said they were both wrong, and that the place that had sunk wasn't the ''really'' old country. She said she could remember the really old country.''

-->''She said the really old country had blown up.''

'''''The Ocean at the End of the Lane''''' is a 2013 dark fantasy book by NeilGaiman.

* TheHecateSisters: All three Hempstock women are this: Lettie is the Maiden, Mrs. Hempstock is the Mother, and Old Mrs. Hempstock is the Crone. They also have associations with the ocean and moon, two things the triple goddess is often associated with in Wicca and in a few folk religions. Also, NeilGaiman [[AuthorAppeal loves this trope in general]], [[SignatureStyle so it's no surprise to see it here as well.]]

* DoNotTauntCthulhu: The hunger birds attack Lettie, causing Old Mrs. Hempstock to reveal her true form. She questions their actions, but they openly defy her until she notes exactly what she can do to them, at which point they back off immediately and begin begging for mercy.

** Also the "fleas", and, in a somewhat more benevolent version of this trope, the Hempstock women may qualify, given the birds reaction to Old Mrs. Hempstock in her true form.

* ItsAllMyFault: Several times throughout the story, both as a kid and as an adult, the narrator briefly (and very painfully) confronts the realization that all of the horrible things that did wouldn't have happened if ''only he didn't let go of Lettie's hand''. Old Mrs. Hempstock, being a rather more practical sort, points out that even less would have if Lettie hadn't instead on taking him with her - and by extension, that this line of thought goes on forever and is pointless to start on.

* AbusiveParents: The narrator's father isn't abusive at first. He said that he would never hit his children, since his father hit him... but after he is influenced by Ursula Monkton, the father finds a way around this [[spoiler:by attempting to drown his son in the bathtub]].
* AdultFear: Your spouse will start cheating on you with an attractive younger person, who will, in turn, start mistreating your children.
** Although it's told from a child's perspective, and among many more immediate threats, part of what makes Ursula Monkton so horrifying is that she can make the narrator's father do terrible things, possibly [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane without any overt mind control at all]].

* AuthorAvatar: The protagonist is supposedly based loosely on Gaiman himself when he was a child.

* BlueAndOrangeMorality: The hunger birds don't care about anything except "cleaning" up after the fleas. That means eating not only the thing that escaped and her way home, but also [[spoiler:the last piece of the hole inside the narrator's heart]]. They aren't 'evil' or 'good' - they just are.
** Lettie also implies this is the case for the fleas themselves - that they don't mean to harm, they are just doing what is part of their nature. They can't help it.

* DidWeJustHaveTeaWithCthulhu:
** The narrator has tea and eats dinner with the Hempstocks several times. They are really lovely people, even though they aren't actually people, and at least one of them is old enough to remember the Big Bang.
** A less pleasant example occurs when the narrator and his father and sister eat dinner with a much less benevolent HumanoidAbomination.
* DidYouJustRomanceCthulu?: [[spoiler: A HumanoidAbomination has sex with the narrator's father]].
* DistractedByTheSexy: The narrator's father, and Ursula Monkton herself, were distracted from the narrator's escape by...other activities.
** At one point the narrator lampshades this, wondering what might have happened if he had been old enough for Ursula to seduce.

** Also the "fleas", and, in a somewhat more benevolent version of this trope, the Hempstock women may qualify.

* ItsAllMyFault: Several times throughout the story, both as a kid and as an adult, the narrator briefly (and very painfully) confronts the realization that all of the horrible things that did wouldn't have happened if ''only he didn't let go of Lettie's hand''. Old Mrs. Hempstock, being a rather more practical sort, points out that even less would have if she hadn't instead on taking him with her - and by extension, that this line of thought goes on forever and is pointless to start on.
* JockDadNerdSon: Explicitly stated at the end - the narrator's father liked cars and played rugby and wanted his son to do the same, but the narrator instead loved reading books and comics.

* OnePersonBirthdayParty: The narrator suffers one at the beginning of the novel.

* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: All of the Hempstocks are older then they look... much, much older.

** Several ones to ''DoctorWho''. Was anyone surprised?

* AbusiveParents: The narrator's father isn't abusive at first. He said that he would never hit his children, since his father hit him...but after he is influenced by Ursula Monkton, the father finds a way around this [[spoiler:by attempting to drown his son in the bathtub]].