Once More to the Lake tells the story of the author returning to his campground with a lake, a place where he happily spent countless childhood evenings. For the first time, the author decides to have his son accompany him. It is here, seeing…
White’s Once More to the Lake, White relives his experience at the same lake to which he visited as a child. He begins by describing the lake when he was a child and then progressing as he ages. The main purpose of doing so is to depict the effects of time on not only the setting, but on himself. Throughout the essay, White is constantly comparing himself to not only his son, but his own father. “I began to sustain the illusion that [my son] was I, and therefore, by simple transposition, that I was my father” (White par. 4). One of the most prominent pieces of the essay that depicts the overall meaning is described in the very end of the essay. “I watched him, his hard little body, skinny and bare, saw him wince slightly as he pulled up around his vitals the small, soggy, icy garment. As he buckled the swollen belt, suddenly my groin felt the chill of death” (White par. 13). In these last sentences, White is not only realizing that he is middle-aged, but he is feeling what his son is feeling as he enters the cold lake water. Thus creating White’s dual-existance in the world; living as a child, as well as an adult. The diction of White’s essay seems to mimic the motions of the lake: calm and tranquil. While the tone of White in his essay is extremely nostalgic as he reluctantly accepts that time has aged him. White seems to struggle with living in this childhood memory of the lake, which appears to be so vivid that an illusion is created in his head in which White is…
Among the major differences between the two essays is the way they are structured. In the essay “How…
It led to him almost killing a man and raping a woman, and would not have forced him to submerge into the murky waters of Greasy Lake, but it did allow him to “emerge with a cleansed sense of maturity and understanding”(Ganter). He realizes how dirty and unpleasant Greasy Lake is and after seeing the dead man floating in the lake what happens to the people who frequent it. And because Greasy Lake is a physical symbol of the lifestyle that the narrator lives. The fact that he realizes how repulsing the lake is is a self-realization that his lifestyle is the…
"Once More to the Lake" is a complex story about embracing change and accepting mortality as part of the aging process. The preference related to stylistic writing boils down to the individual reader and how the reader feels when the last word of the story is read. Will "This Old House" allow the reader to experience hopefulness or a warm and fuzzy feeling as they contemplate life moving forward? Perhaps "Once More to the Lake" leaves the reader feeling uncomfortable or uneasy as they now are faced with accepting the reality of their own mortality. Which of the two stories based on the descriptions so far in this writing are you drawn to and in addition which story inspires you to move outside the safety of your comfort zone and take a risk for self…
As E.B. White reflects on his childhood memories and revisits his favorite past vacation spot in Maine, he undergoes an internal struggle between acting and viewing the lake like he did as a kid and viewing it as his father had.White suffers a”dual existence” as he relives the experiences and sensations of his childhood while observing his son experience them for the first time. This creates the strange feeling that he is sometimes his son who is fishing and boating, and that he is sometimes his father.…
In the short story “Once More to the Lake”, White describes the lake as “fade-proof” and the woods as “unshatterable” because he wants to describe how they have endured through time. When he came to visit the lake, it brought back many memories and felt like nothing has changed. In the story, he describes himself as a “salt water” man because he is not the same person as when he was younger. So he thought that if he came back to his childhood vacation after so many years that the lake would be marred. To his surprise, everything remained exactly as how he remembered when he was a child.…
In Elwyn Brooks White’s essay “Once More to the Lake” we learn about a trip, that the author took with his son to a lake in Maine. The lake is very sentimental to White because his father brought him to very same lake as a child. During E. B. White’s trip to the lake with his son, he is able to compare and contrast what he sees to experiences from his time at the lake. Some of these experiences led White to believe that he was experiencing events from different family member’s lives. This leads him to believe that he is experiencing three different views during the time spent at the lake. Which leads to White trying to sort out what is still the same against what has changed at the lake.…
essays dealing with town dumpsters. They are both similar in the sense that they both have positive feelings…
Writing, is an argument for something, in this short paper we will look at Whites argument in Once more to the lake. Going through and reading this paper you think its about a father talking about old memories and going fishing with his boy. This story is much more then that, this story starts off with a father looking back on childhood memories of going to the lake with his father and fishing and swimming in a lake the story goes on then to talk about that summer after summer he would return. He then goes on to state that he is a salt-water man, but sometimes in summer there are days when the restlessness of the tides and the fearful cold of the sea water. He wishes that he could return to the lake.…
E.B. White's essay "Once More to the Lake" is a very well written piece of writing. That being saidI will first start breaking down the main points and different parts of this essay by discussing the more broad subject of his structure. Most of the essay is written about the present but he jumps periodically to his past. He uses this effect as a comparison between the past and the present. It shows mostly how his son is just like he was, but at the same time his son can be different. For instance they both snuck out on the boat, but he used a quiet oar while his son used an loud outboard motor. The time and culture differences seem to jump out to show some of the suttle differences time can cause. An example could be the switch of people from humming inboard motors to roaring outboard motors. I say these are suttle, but in this story they are everything. He uses the small differences to show how much the world has changed. It is easy to understand and apply the concept because the story is so realistically true. The essay was just a chronlogical story about a fishing trip, besides the occasional flashback of course. A very simple story used to show the importance of the observations made during different points in the authors life. He is able to bring it all together.That is one part of what makes this literature so great.…
There comes a time in every young man's life for him to break a barrier of reality to go from invincibility to mortality. They have to take that leap forward gradually, but as they do they will make mistakes along the way and have to learn from the bad ones. The short story “Greasy Lake” by T. Coraghessan Boyle is about three young men who have to break that barrier of reality in one horrible night by making mistake after mistake, only they have to learn from their mistakes quickly or they wont get out of their bad situation. There are two different symbols, themes, and characters that have meaning to it in this story. The symbols are the key being lost, and the water itself signifies a rebirth. The themes that are seen in this story are that the point of view was told from an older person looking back at his younger years and that he would have to learn from the mistakes of the past. The characters that have meanings to them are the main character and Bobby (the bad guy).…
The essay “Once More to the Lake” by E.B. White was about a man who had a great sense of nostalgia after he reminisces old childhood memories of a lake in Maine. The author begins to feel a sense of immortality and is in denial of the fact that he’s not a child anymore. He begins to realize that we cannot relive or recreate our childhood, only visit the locations it took place. Throughout White’s essay, he begins to convey his confused and deniable emotional roller coaster towards mortality.…
In “Once More to the Lake”, White uses a plethora of literary devices to describe his childhood. After taking his son to the spot that he goes visit often throughout his childhood years hit him waves of emotions. Missing his childhood was not the sole reason that hit him but looking at the things his son does reminds him so much of his childhood. White uses various themes and if one reads carefully the theme of Man versus Himself is vividly portrayed in the first paragraph of this essay. White has a conflict within himself when he’s fighting to not accept the fact that he is the father not the son. His denial of his own morality clearly shows his internal conflict. “You remember one thing, and that suddenly reminds you of another thing”(White 233). For him travelling back to the lake is the same as travelling back in time. While he walks along memory lane White keeps and keeps revealing more and more things from his past. The placidity of the lake, the smell of the lumber from the bed, the shadows of the pines along the shore and how he used to be the first person to woke up in the cabin and leaves silently to not wake the others up. The more white discovers the harder it his for him to accept the fact that he is now in the position of his father. He wants to deny the fact that now he is a father who’s bring his son to this lake. It was an emotional…
B. White’s essay he describes a dual existence he has with his son when spending time at this lake. In some ways White is facing an identity crisis when he has a hard time distinguishing between himself and his son. The essay moves in a non- chronological order where White weaves in and out through the past and present. While at the lake, in its essence remains unchanged, White himself is different, and so he finally accepts the fundamental irony of life. The natural cycle of birth, childhood, maturity, and death are inevitable, he too realizes he is facing the natural course that leads to the chill of…