Prompt: Discuss some element of craft that you appreciated in the second chapter of Neil Gaiman’s “The Ocean at the End of the Lane”.

There’s so much in this chapter that I could focus on, but I really loved the description Gaiman uses. In the first chapter and the prologue, the reader can tell that the main character did not have a happy childhood, but we only see that through the actions of other characters, such as none of his friends showing up to his birthday or his parents not asking about the kitten after it was run over. In chapter two, Gaiman puts in small, but meaningful moments of description that shifts the narrator’s bleak childhood to the moment he finds a true friend. The dark is a prevalent descriptive force during this chapter. Pages 13 and 14 detail how our narrator was terrified of the dark and wanted to keep his door open while he slept, while on page 15, he discusses how his father always burnt the toast in the morning. Our narrator describes the toast as “smoking” and “blackened”. The burnt, dark, toast is carried with our narrator for most of the chapter. He hides it from the other characters in the chapter, either by hiding it in his lap or behind his back. This small piece of description can show us our narrator’s insecurity about his family life, how his father tended to not pay attention to the toast, and by extension, his own son. The dark descriptions are replaced by the color red later on in the chapter, although we get our first glimpse of it on page 16 when the police car passes Lettie Hempstock and her “red, red cheeks”. Everything about Lettie seems to be surrounded by the color red, such as her red-brown hair and her red skirt. By this point, dark colors are all but gone from the narrative, and are replaced by vivid colors. To me, Gaiman’s use of color in this chapter signifies a transition for our main character, from a dull, depressing “blackened” life to one that feels more organic when he meets Lettie and her family with descriptors such as “red” and “apple”. It’s a small part of this chapter, but it really stuck out to me.