E. B. White's Writing Style

Every little boy dreams of the day they are old enough to go on a fishing trip with dad. In both passage one and passage two a story is told about this exact experience. While E.B White’s story is told from a fathers eyes reminiscing, Virginia Woolf wrote her passage from her own eyes. Constantly going to a summer lake house as a boy the father in passage one finds himself nostalgia seeing the fun his son is having. In paragraph one he states, “the incessant wind which blows across the afternoon and into the evening make me wish for the placidity of a lake in the woods.” In order to satisfy his need to be back at his childhood vacation spot, he takes son fishing for the first time. By doing this for his son he is also trying to recreate the experience he had as a child. The entire time the father describes the trip with his son, his tone remain surreal. As they fish the first morning the father has …show more content…
Passage one was a firsthand experience where an old tradition was passed down to a son through a new experience. Passage two takes a different approach where it has a father and daughter duo who do none of the fishing themselves. As stated in the passage, “we had hung about tacking, and hauling in gurnard after gurnard dab after dab” showcasing that the narrator and her father were merely spectators on their trip. As well as the father stating, “I don’t like to see fish caught.” After this the passage is left with an emptiness and feeling that this was the last of fishing trips for them. In conclusion, both passage one and passage two recite a story of a father fishing with his son/daughter. Where E.B White’s passage is about a father determined to relive a past memory though his own son, and create the same experiences for him that he had. On the other side of the spectrum Virginia Woolf wrote about herself and her father letting go of an old tradition of watching others fishing