The Myth of Childhood

Neil Gaiman as an author is well known for tackling mythology and reinventing it in many different ways for his own books. In Good Omens, he uses christian mythology to create a love letter to humanity. In American Gods, he asks the question of what exactly is sacred and why when the greek pantheon move to American and adapts to the times. The Ocean at the End of the Lane is no exception in the way that it utilizes the triple goddess from greek mythology and reinterprets it into three very English women who are old enough to remember the old country and do their various chores the old fashioned way. However, the biggest myth that Gaiman decides to break down in this book is the myth of childhood itself.

A running theme in this book and quite honestly throughout Neil Gaiman's ethos as an author is that children and adults are not actually as different as we think. The first paragraph of the book brings this idea to light. The narrator tells  the audience the black funeral clothes he wears would usually, "make me feel uncomfortable, as if I were in a stolen uniform, or pretending to be an adult. Today they gave me comfort of a kind. I was wearing the right clothes for a hard day". Already we are establishing the idea that the narrator feels like he's still the same child he ever was with only his appearance being the only thing that lets him pass the test of adulthood.

This idea is reinforced by the inclusion of the triple goddess, the figure from greek mythology who takes the form of three women, the maiden, the mother, and the crone and whom all three weave the fates of everyone and everything in the universe. This single being exists as a child, an adult woman in her prime, and the aged woman. She does not move past these younger stages but instead they are are raveled and intertwined into who she is at all times.  Like this figure, adults no matter their age are still the same person they were in childhood. They never leave it behind, always trying to pass themselves off as the wise adults they believed everyone else to be. No one truly knows what they are doing, at the mercy that fate take them in, the same way that even the king of the gods, Zeus was at the him of what the triple goddess weaves. “Grown-ups don’t look like grown-ups on the inside either,” Gaiman writes. “Outside, they’re big and thoughtless and they always know what they’re doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren’t any grown-ups.” 

Gaiman takes the triple goddess and recontextualizes them into a setting that today's audience will understand. He brings them to the English country side and portrays them as a small family who are old enough to remember the old country and who still perform their chore in that manner. The Hempstock women provide a comforting presence in the way that they take care of the main character and seem to know how to handle everything. However, even that illusion is shattered as at the end of the book, the three women reach their limits in power as they are unable to find a way to save the boy or even the world from the the birdlike creatures who want to consume everything and anything. In a way, they are as vulnerable as the boy, and that shows itself in the way that eleven year old Lettie Hempstock decides to give herself to save him. Despite her power, she is still a child and is still growing in learning, facing the consequences of her mistake of putting the boy at risk in the first place. The triple goddess loses the childlike side of herself just like humans lose sight of their own childhood and numb themselves to both the wonder and terrors of the world and get caught up in shallow pursuits of money, sex, and so on. However, Gaiman confirms that Lettie will one day return to her family in the same way that the main character will come back to the Hempstocks and remember what he lost from childhood. Gaiman shows that no matter how old we get we still have those moments of clarity and will continue to learn and grow until the day our thread reaches it's end.