Adults vs. Children

In The Ocean at the End of the Lane, children and adults are all subject to the same psychological forces of desire and regret, nostalgia and hope. The narrator is just beginning to feel an adult range of emotions and to see as far as adults can see. His vision is not very much different from his father’s, since they are both subject to Ursula and her wiles. Lettie and her mother and grandmother, on the other hand, are wise beyond their years. They know about the ways of the spirits, and they know the words and gestures and actions that can control them. This knowledge, though, is not so much related to adulthood as to long experience in the world. Presumably, the narrator himself has an age-old personality as well, and he could know as much as the Hempstock women, if he...