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Once More To The Lake Analysis

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February 11th, 2010
Once more to the Lake is an essay written by E.B. in which the author tries to establish the links of his present life with his past experiences when he was a little boy. The essay starts as a father and son go to the lake, which was a favorite place for camping and fishing of the father when he was a child. The father is full of expectations as the lake symbolizes his youth ages and the most careless period of his life. So the decision to go fishing again on this lake may be regarded as an attempt to return childhood or at least to return childhood impressions and memories.
The father is depressed and it’ obvious while reading the beginning where he describes the lake of his childhood and the same lake during his elder years:
“It was like the revival of an old melodrama that I had seen long ago with childish awe.”
The main reason for such kind of depression is the fact that he is not able to return his childhood and the fact that he is getting older as he is not able to remember all moments of joy on the lake. Another important detail which is mentioned by the author is that the lake also had changed since the last time he was there. In childhood years it was nearly a virgin lake, with wildlife and absence of
…show more content…

There were cottages sprinkled around the shores, and it was in farming although the shores of the lake were quite heavily wooded”
Such attitudes show that the changes which happened to the lake and changes which affected the author: “the lake is no longer wild” it also makes him to understand that he is no longer a teenager, but a grown up with his own personal life, children and responsibilities. He understands that probably the impressions from this trip will be different as he is longer a child for whom the camping was the greatest event of the year. But nevertheless he is very attached to those memories and the use of “same” in the description of the lake only proves


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