To the tarain
1. White says that he seemed to be living “a dual existence” as a father in the present and as a son in the remembered life of the past. Point to some moments when that dual existence seems most natural and to some when it seems more difficult to maintain. What seems to explain the differences to him and to you?
The most natural moment, to me, was the very first one when he heard the boy go off on his own in the morning, I could imagine the slightly dizzy feeling of dislocation in time. The dragonfly lighting on the fishing rod, the sharing of sodas and their explorations of the streams and the wharf all took place in surroundings virtually unchanged from years before, encouraging a strong sense of deja-vu, The moments that seemed to discourage the transposition of identities were the ones in which some substantial change was noticed: the ability to bring a car in right to the cabin, the presence of the outboard motors. When he talked about his son learning to drive an outboard, and then reminisced about the kinds of motors he had driven, that seemed to me his moment of greatest separation from the dual-existence sensation. The feeling was brought on by the many details that were identical to the ones he remembered from childhood, but receded when he noticed the changes since then.
2. What do you make of the final sentence of the essay? How is the earlier extended theme of annihilated time related to and resolved in the ending of the essay?
I think White was describing the sudden cessation of the the dual-existence sensation; suddenly the son reverted to a separate entity, and the father was feeling the years return to himself, along with the awareness of mortality. I don’t know whether his own father was alive at that point, but perhaps as part of the return to self he was realizing that his own father was now an old man. The earlier timelessness and dreamy quality of the week at the lake are dissolved suddenly in the last sentence, as reality returns —
The most natural moment, to me, was the very first one when he heard the boy go off on his own in the morning, I could imagine the slightly dizzy feeling of dislocation in time. The dragonfly lighting on the fishing rod, the sharing of sodas and their explorations of the streams and the wharf all took place in surroundings virtually unchanged from years before, encouraging a strong sense of deja-vu, The moments that seemed to discourage the transposition of identities were the ones in which some substantial change was noticed: the ability to bring a car in right to the cabin, the presence of the outboard motors. When he talked about his son learning to drive an outboard, and then reminisced about the kinds of motors he had driven, that seemed to me his moment of greatest separation from the dual-existence sensation. The feeling was brought on by the many details that were identical to the ones he remembered from childhood, but receded when he noticed the changes since then.
2. What do you make of the final sentence of the essay? How is the earlier extended theme of annihilated time related to and resolved in the ending of the essay?
I think White was describing the sudden cessation of the the dual-existence sensation; suddenly the son reverted to a separate entity, and the father was feeling the years return to himself, along with the awareness of mortality. I don’t know whether his own father was alive at that point, but perhaps as part of the return to self he was realizing that his own father was now an old man. The earlier timelessness and dreamy quality of the week at the lake are dissolved suddenly in the last sentence, as reality returns —