Here there be Dragons, Monsters and Spoilers (Quotes Galore)

**Warning: rife with spoilers **

"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten." Recently, I attended a Neil Gaiman signing, the last of his signings. I adore Gaiman’s writing, mythological and fantastic. Forever, he will be immortalized in the Sandman, weaver of stories, our age’s dreamer of marvels.  “Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.” He turns the phrase, molds it, and transforms an algae filled pond, dead and swamped with reeds, into an ocean at the end of a lane.

                Certainly a number of lines within Ocean at the End of the Lane piqued my interest, or churned across my thoughts until my brain was lightly creamed. The story delved into topics of monsters, youth and adulthood, trust and sacrifice.  It is a mythos of fantastic fashion, a neatly blended nostalgia and entirely other. The main character finds himself recollecting a series of events from his youth, forcibly removed from his memories.  He’s bookish, introverted, friendless, and honest, and he encounters a monster, a devil beyond his ken.

                “Monsters come in all shapes and sizes, Some of them are things people are scared of. Some of them are things that look like things people used to be scared of a long time ago. Sometimes monsters are things people should be scared of, but they aren't.” There are a lot of quotes through this book that struck me, and I dare not entertain the time evaluating them all.  A monster comes into the main character’s life, intruding and catastrophically altering things for the worse, and almost getting him killed.  At one point, an ancient,  good witch, Lettie, is working with the boy to send the monstrous woman, now his sinister nanny, home, and the main character and Lettie are discussing fear. She asks him if he thinks that Ursula Monkton is scared of anything, and he replies that she’s a grown-up, and that grown-ups and monsters aren't scared of anything. Lettie replies, “Oh, monsters are scared… that’s why they’re monsters.” 

                The main character is dragged through a series of inhuman trials, and at each instance, his mettle is tested.  He drops Lettie’s hand, and absorbs a portal to an alien world in his foot in the form of a worm; he tries leaving his house and is almost drowned by his own father, and tormented by an otherworldly housekeeper; he is told, by the varmints, that his heart must be consumed and consumed.

I think what Gaiman has crafted, and often develops so precisely and perfectly, is a meta-story: a story of ideas within parables where tales are formed from the music of the universe. “A story only matters, I suspect, to the extent that which people in the story change.” Throughout this story, the main character is forced into unbelievable circumstances with only three crazy ladies who might believe a word he says.  And he changes. In another of his quotes, Gaiman articulates this well: “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” Gaiman has dreamt a world full of the fantastic, the implausible, and has forged it into something terrible: a dragon. And as we dive into the ocean of mystery with the character throughout his tale, we, too, battle a raging wyrm, wicked and full of mythical cunning.

And we think to ourselves, this isn't true, this is just a story. But, in truth, Gaiman answers this as well: “Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot” and when the main character says, “I liked myths. They weren't adult stories and they weren't children's stories. They were better than that. They just were.”  These stories are truth stories, not because they happened, but because they tell us something about ourselves, about everything.

Lastly, this story is a bit about sacrifice and trust.  Into each section, the boy holds Lettie’s hand, and she promises she won’t let anything injurious happen to him.  She protects him, instructs him, cares for him, and in the end, when he fights with courage and despair, running into the very creatures that might consume him, she sacrifices herself for him.  The main character struggles with this, the surrender of a life to save his.  When he’s driving back with Lettie’s mother, he thinks to himself, “A flash of resentment. It's hard enough being alive, trying to survive in the world and find your place in it, to do the things you need to do to get by, without wondering if the thing you just did, whatever it was, was worth someone having...if not died, then having given up her life. It wasn't fair.” 

This quote is interesting because this is, in a sense, my faith.  I live each day wondering whether my actions warrant the salvation of Christ.  Was I worth that sacrifice?  Are my harsh words worthy of that death? Are my lies? My theft of another’s right to truth, peace, and joy? With every theft of mine, I must consider whether my actions are worth having a death, a gift of life, in exchange for those actions. This quote struck me as a poignant reminder of God’s grace and our spiritual marathon. 

                I’m not sure where to end this, for I’m not certain what this is.  I think I’ll finish with another quote from Gaiman, for what could one more hurt? “I suppose the point you grow up is the point you let the dreams go.” Gaiman is, in essence, dreaming the child in each of us. One of the motifs in this book is the contrast of adulthood and childhood. In one curious incident, Lettie says that there are no true adults living. Adults are just children wrapped in a shell. I think it is within me to never let dreams go, and I hope I remain that way until the very end. In one of the Sandman novels, on the topic of dreams, someone says, “Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.” It’s time for beating some dragons, and time for flying.


Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
~ Langston Hughes