Once More To The Lake Analysis Essay

In E.B. White’s “Once More to the Lake” a man travels to a lake, where he vacationed as a child, with his son in an attempt to return to his youth. The apparent unchanging nature of the area brings about the realization his own mortality and inevitable change. The moments of duality and subtle alterations within the passage create an eerie sense of the adjusting world. As he notices faint transformations within the lake, White comes to understand that the slight alterations in his favorite childhood spot are symbolic of the changes occurring in his own life, marking him as an unaware participant in the cycle of time. The first change is marked by the transition from inboard motors to outboard. The roar of the newer motors “was the note that jarred, the one thing that would sometimes break the illusion and set the years moving” (435). In his diction, White chooses the word “jarred,” creating a disturbed tone. The unwelcome
The second adjustment within the passage is the replacement of the waitresses. The girls of White’s present “were still fifteen; their hair had been washed, that was the only difference” (434). Here the connotation of the word “washed” is connected to the idea of cleanliness, an improvement from the implied dirtiness of the past. Just as waitresses gone by were replaced by newer, younger, and better versions of themselves, White will come to be replaced by his son. While White sits lakeside, his son prepares to enter the water, and the final change occurs. “[He watches] him, his hard little body, skinny and bare, [sees] him wince slightly as he [pulls] up around around his vitals the small, soggy, ice garment. As he [buckles] the swollen belt, suddenly [White’s] groin [feels] the chill of death” (437). With this diction, the phrase “chill of death” relates White’s dark realization of mortality. Although in the past it was White who ran excitedly toward the lake, the present has his own son