Hepsody In The Rain Chapter 1 Analysis

The prologue introduces the persona of the story—a middle-aged man who had just attended a funeral, and is now driving along the roads of Sussex country with an hour to kill before making his appearance at his sister’s house. A couple of random turns leads him to his childhood home, a house he claims “had not existed for decades.” He drives to the end of the lane, where the Hempstock farm can be found, and is greeted by Mrs. Hempstock. Mrs. Hempstock remembers the unnamed persona as her daughter Lettie’s friend. She offers the persona tea, but the persona asks to go down to the duck pond, where he reminisces how Lettie used to refer to it as the sea, and how Lettie herself had moved somewhere far away, and how they might have fallen in the

The boy has a dream about him choking, only to wake up actually choking on a silver shilling. He is confronted by his sister, who suspects him of throwing coins at her and her friends. Lettie is waiting for hin down the drive, and seems to have answers to all of his questions. They head to the farm for pancakes, and the boy is now much more certain that the Hempstocks are a peculiar lot. When asked about her age, Old Mrs. Hempstock says she remembers when the moon was made. Mrs. Hempstock talks of a creature that has been wanting to give people money, which explains recent events that have taken place within the neighborhood. She sends Lettie off to bind the creature. Despite Old Mrs. Hempstock’s warning, Lettie takes the boy with her. Lettie tells the boy not to let go of her. They find the creature—described in the book as a “lopsided canvas structure aged by weather and ripped by time.” It had a ragged face, with deep holes in the fabric for eyes. Lettie starts to sing in a language later identified as the language of shaping. Just then, the creature starts hurling balls of cobwebs at them, causing the boy to let go of Lettie. At the exact moment he lets go, he feels a stabbing pain in the sole of his foot. Lettie continues to sing, until the song ends, and the creature is collapsed into a heap of gray canvas cloth. They walk back to the farm. The creature, referred to by Old Mrs. Hempstock as a “flea”, had used the boy as a doorway to their world—the stabbing pain in his foot—and now takes the form of a new boarder named Ursula Monkton, who will also be taking care of the boy and his sister, since their mother will be gone for four days a week for her new job as an optometrist. The boy senses that there is something not quite right with Ursula, and his doubts are confirmed when she forbids him from ever leaving their property, and manages to possess his father to drown him in the bathtub. The boy escapes and runs to