Neil Gaiman opens The Ocean at the End of the Lane with the Maurice Sendak epigraph to foreshadow the idea that children are wiser than adults realize; both the epigraph and the novel suggest that children can appreciate some underlying truths about the world better than adults.
The Maurice Sendak epigraph references this idea about children and their ability to comprehend road blocks in life better than adults can. The last two sentences say, “ But I mustn't let adults know I knew. It would scare them.” Children know more than adults think, they see the wide eyes to tell someone to stop talking, of the moving lips, but more than that you see and experience the world much more differently and more unique than you will as an adult. When you …show more content…
In the epilogue on page 228 the narrator has a thought, “ It doesn't matter that I can't remember the details any longer: death happened to her. Death happens to all of us.” This is very important to understanding the narrator's character, when he says this it sounds like he is afraid and depressed for the thought of death. But when he was 7 years old, only 7 years old he wasn't afraid of death he was willing to sacrifice himself for the entire world knowing he probably had a long life ahead of him. So, was he really an adult when when he was 7 years old because now as an adult he is definitely not the same person he once was. The narrator also says when trying to get to Lettie’s farm, “ Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences.” The exploration and the imagination is what makes kids see what adults can't. The narrator throughout the story breaks the status quo of adults and children. He was such a self-sufficient child never depending on anyone else, but at the same time he was always ready to explore or do something in his lab. The narrator really did understand the truths of the world, the not so nice parts of the world you are shielded from when
The Maurice Sendak epigraph references this idea about children and their ability to comprehend road blocks in life better than adults can. The last two sentences say, “ But I mustn't let adults know I knew. It would scare them.” Children know more than adults think, they see the wide eyes to tell someone to stop talking, of the moving lips, but more than that you see and experience the world much more differently and more unique than you will as an adult. When you …show more content…
In the epilogue on page 228 the narrator has a thought, “ It doesn't matter that I can't remember the details any longer: death happened to her. Death happens to all of us.” This is very important to understanding the narrator's character, when he says this it sounds like he is afraid and depressed for the thought of death. But when he was 7 years old, only 7 years old he wasn't afraid of death he was willing to sacrifice himself for the entire world knowing he probably had a long life ahead of him. So, was he really an adult when when he was 7 years old because now as an adult he is definitely not the same person he once was. The narrator also says when trying to get to Lettie’s farm, “ Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences.” The exploration and the imagination is what makes kids see what adults can't. The narrator throughout the story breaks the status quo of adults and children. He was such a self-sufficient child never depending on anyone else, but at the same time he was always ready to explore or do something in his lab. The narrator really did understand the truths of the world, the not so nice parts of the world you are shielded from when