“Once more to the Lake” is a short essay written by E.B. White in first-person. White tries to form a relationship between his past and present experiences. It begins with a father and son who travel to a place White’s family visited every August, a great lake for camping and fishing. E.B. White is full of excitement as the lake symbolizes his childhood and the best memories in his life. Going fishing again on this lake, he wants to return his childhood or to return his childhood memories. He later realizes that he is not able to return to his childhood and that he’s getting older and he is not capable of remember all the memories brought from the lake. White says, “I wondered how time would have married this unique, this holy spot—the coves …show more content…
Although, we know everything changes as time goes on. During his childhood years the lake was quiet, with little nature and a lack of main roads. “The lake had never been what you would call a wild lake. There were cottages sprinkled around the shores, and it was in farming although the shores of the lake were quite heavily wooded.” (pg. 1-2) This shows that the way he remembers the lake it is similar to the way he sees the lake now and he is accepting that he is no longer a teen and no longer the son, but now the father with …show more content…
The way he feels is common for people who have visited places that are connected to great memories. When White mentions that even the storms have not changed, “It was the revival of an old melodrama that I had seen long ago with childish awe.” To him when the rain the thunder and lightning disappear the sky becomes more clear and his vision of the lake begins to change. He then realizes that time is moving forward by the annoying sound of the boat motors he hasn’t heard before. However, some things don’t change but only the position it plays in the generation. The past is something that we cannot remove. All senses smell, sight, hearing, taste, touch, can mentally bring back a thousand memories. White says, “Outside, the road was tarred and cars stood in front of the store. Instead, all was just as it had always been.” He tries to explain that outside, we can see everything has changed, but on the inside everything that we have experienced before stays the
The lake itself plays a major role throughout the story, as it mirrors the characters almost exactly. For example, the lake is described as being “fetid and murky, the mud banks glittering with broken glass and strewn with beer cans” (125). The characters are also described as being “greasy” or “dangerous” several times, which ties the lake and the characters together through their similarities. The narrator explains, “We were bad. At night we went up to Greasy Lake” (124). This demonstrates the importance that the surroundings in which the main characters’ choose to be in is extremely important to the image that they reflect. At the beginning of the story, these characters’ images and specifically being “bad” is essentially all that mattered to them. “We wore torn up leather jackets…drank gin and grape juice…sniffed glue and ether and what somebody claimed was cocaine” (124). They went out of their ...
The viewpoint of the world that the narrator has, completely alters as certain events take place throughout the story. His outlook on nature transforms into a wholly different standpoint as the story progresses. As his tale begins, the narrator sees himself as a tough guy or “bad character”. He believes he is invincible. There is nobody as cool as he is or as dangerous as him and his friends are. With his followers, the narrator goes to Greasy Lake, he takes in the nature that surrounds him. He thinks of himself to be a kid who knows everything. To him, the lake represents a night of misbehavior and partying. The unhealthy, treacherous atmosphere of Greasy Lake is alluring, fun, and exciting to someone as threatening as he is. “We went up to the lake because everyone went there, because we wanted to snuff the rich sent of possibility on the breeze, watch a girl take off her clothes and plunge into the festering murk, drink beer, smoke pot, howl at the stars, savor the incongruous full-throated roar of rock and roll against the primeval susurrus of frogs and crickets. This was nature.” This quote gives a clear idea of what the narrators perception of what not only nature is, but of what the world is. He lives to have fun. He is fearless and lives for the moment. All that life is to him is sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
In 'Greasy Lake,' the dualism of the characters' nature is ever-present. They are self-proclaimed bad guys who 'cultivated decadence like a taste' (79). As the story progresses, however, it is revealed that just the opposite is true. While they are essentially caricatures of themselves, it is this dynamic that drives the story. Their tough exterior is just that, an exterior veneer that permeates their actions as 'dangerous characters.' The narrator is somewhat detached from the younger self of his story. It is an ironic detachment'a parody of his moral ignorance. He recalls the 'bad? antics of his youth: driving their 'parents' whining station wagons,' but doing so as bad as humanly possible, of course. He mocks both himself and his friends in his retrospection of their experience in Greasy Lake, the consummate locale of 'bad.' To the boys, the lake serves as a kind of haven for bad characters such as themselves. Truly, however, the lake is an extension of the dynamic between who the boys are and who they parade around as. It is here where the previous and false understanding about their world is shattered, and they are thrust into a moralistic reformation. Ultimately, the dichotomous nature of the protagonist is resolved by his visit to the lake, and perhaps, the lake itself.
Authors often use details that evoke a response in readers to produce an effective description. Their aim is not simply to tell readers what something looks like but to show them. Katherine Anne Porter’s “The Grave” and E.B. White’s “Once More to the Lake” are essays that use subjective language to illustrate the principles of effective description. Porter’s “The Grave” describes a childish afternoon of rabbit hunting that brings death close enough to be seen and understood, while White’s “Once More tot he Lake” is a classic essay of persona; reminiscence in which he recreates the lakeside camp he visited with his son.
Within the essay “Once More to the Lake”, E.B. notes that “I bought myself a couple of bass hooks… returned to the lake… to revisit old haunts… When the others went swimming my son said he was going in… As he buckled the swollen belt, suddenly my groin left the chill of death (White 464). The essay “Once More to the Lake” brings a significant amount of attention towards the author’s attempt to secure personal satisfaction. It becomes quite obvious in the first few paragraphs, that the main character is on this vacation with his son, to recreate the careless feeling he use to have while vacationing with his dad as a child. Even though E.B. does not come out clearly and say it, the author is chasing some type of nostalgic feeling he clearly needs to feel better about life. On each page, White uses comparison and contrast to explain to the reader how the trip resembles the one he use to experience with his dad. By the end of the reading, the father begins to realize his vacation trip with his son will never be the same as the one he has dreamt about. He is no longer a child who can only notice the positive components of life. At this point, the father is an adult who will never have the innocence he once clung too. It takes some reflection for him to finally realize his place as a father in the situation. Comparison and contrast displays the idea that even though everything may look the same, it does not mean it feels the same. This mode rhetoric reflects back to the theme at the end of essay, as it concludes the author’s failed attempt to find some satisfaction from the
Even in the first two lines he comments, “a quick blur of curved silver darting away, having nothing to do with your life or your death” (23-24). In these two lines, he dramatizes how irrelevant a life seems after one dies as he compares a micro piece of silver bolting away, not even clearly, but blurrily. Then he proceeds to add a transcendentalist idea with the line “the tide will take you, or the lake will accept it all … sink towards the … bottom” (25-26), noting that the person becomes one with nature after having a quick death. Soon after the lake takes the person into its waters, the person leaves “behind what [they] have already forgotten, the surface…” (27), which implies that once the person is dead, life will not be remembered and all that will be left is the hollow corpse. The last bit of “now overrun with the high travels of clouds” (27-28), makes death seem like flesh-to-earth decay, instead of taking into account an afterlife of some kind. After the person drowns, the lake restores its natural, tranquil state, as if nothing happened and the death of a person had no more significance than the death of a feral
This vacation spot White describes through memories of his boyhood days always seemed to be so wonderful no matter what had gone wrong. White recalls the time when "[his] father rolled over in a canoe" and another time when "[they] all got ringworm" but none of this mattered in the long run, after all, this was the best place on earth. To White the mountain lake is seen as "constant and trustworthy", and on the trip back there with his own son, White wondered if "time would have marred" the appearance of the lake. Thoughts of the time spent there summer after summer continued to revisit White throughout the trip and everything from thunderstorms to the stillness of the water
The story describes the protagonist who is coming of age as torn between the two worlds which he loves equally, represented by his mother and his father. He is now mature and is reflecting on his life and the difficulty of his childhood as a fisherman. Despite becoming a university professor and achieving his father’s dream, he feels lonely and regretful since, “No one waits at the base of the stairs and no boat rides restlessly in the waters of the pier” (MacLeod 261). Like his father, the narrator thinks about what his life could have been like if he had chosen another path. Now, with the wisdom and experience that comes from aging and the passing of time, he is trying to make sense of his own life and accept that he could not please everyone. The turmoil in his mind makes the narrator say, “I wished that the two things I loved so dearly did not exclude each other in a manner that was so blunt and too clear” (MacLeod 273). Once a decision is made, it is sometimes better to leave the past and focus on the present and future. The memories of the narrator’s family, the boat and the rural community in which he spent the beginning of his life made the narrator the person who he is today, but it is just a part of him, and should not consume his present.
Yet throughout White’s essay you see how peaceful he keeps the tone the entire time. With the subtle approach White has on the parts of his memories he thoroughly explains to this audience. Look at the melodrama of the storm White uses. While in The Pond the tone is more spiritual and religious. For example in The Pond, Thoreau is using The Pond as a spiritual symbol. Then there is the dominant impression. In both The Ponds and Once More to the Lake they share something. The way they share their views. The views of the memories, environment around them, and the way they felt throughout the entire thing. Once More to the Lake is on the memories surround the lake White has always known of as a boy and that is his dominant
“Goose Pond”, written by Thomas Williams seemingly is a novel about the tranquil rural life but intricately portrays the mind and state of a fifty-eight year old man who has just lost his wife. Having natural and peaceful aspects, the story itself is not about the simple rural life in the woods. It depicts how Robert Hurley began to deal and come to terms with his sudden loneliness and realization of his eventual death. Including both the realistic cruelty of life alone and the expectation readers would have from a novel—such like a Norman Rockwell painting; he keeps the readers indulged in the mind and heart of the lonesome Robert Hurley.
One day when I was five years old I recall my grandfather asking "Steve, why don't, you go with us to Minnesota next week?" My grandfather was a very important person to me, until he died in 1986. I spent every possible moment of my life either with him or thinking about him. Everything he loved, I loved, and vice-versa. Being bored with my present lifestyle in Peoria and excited about traveling with my grandfather, I took up his offer. After a day long car ride with my father, uncle, and grandparents, I arrived at the location that would forever influence and inspire my life: Lost Lake, Minnesota.
Throughout the essay, White reminisces his past experience at the lake where he recalls what it felt like to think about girls and how quiet the steamboat ran on the still water while boys would play mandolins and girls would sing (White). These memories allow White to compare his past with the way things are in the present. He realizes that things are slightly more advanced, such as the loudness of the new motorboats. While White notices the slight changes in the environment, he encounters a dual existence where it
---. “Take Me to the Water.” 1972. James Baldwin: Collected Essays. Ed. Toni Morrison. New York: Library of America, 1998: 353-403.
“The Swimmer,” a short fiction by John Cheever, presents a theme to the reader about the unavoidable changes of life. The story focuses on the round character by the name of Neddy Merrill who is in extreme denial about the reality of his life. He has lost his youth, wealth, and family yet only at the end of the story does he develop the most by experiencing a glimpse of realization on all that he has indeed lost. In the short story “The Swimmer,” John Cheever uses point of view, setting and symbolism to show the value of true relationships and the moments of life that are taken for granted.
The speaker sees this scenery in his mind. As a reader, I can even imagine him standing in a dark room looking at a woman singing and imagining his old days with his mother. Using the picturesque words such as “softly,” “dusk...