Once More To The Lake Analysis

In E.B. White’s autobiographical short story, Once More to the Lake, White appeals to his past adolescence through his own child. White suggests that time had immobilized and life as he knew it was frozen in time and preserved, “everything was as it always had been, that the years were a mirage and that there had been no years”(534), he also states that time is an illusion of a dropped curtain. The past calls to many because of its sentimental characteristics that invite old memories. White is endorsed in the past and is afraid to move forward, but he later identifies the irony of life. The tone from the text appears to be intensely personal as White describes his past, intimate memories with his father in grave detail. White also appears …show more content…
Throughout the text White had been under the impression of living a dual existence, “I looked at the boy, who was silently watching his fly, and it was my hands that held his rod, my eyes watching”(534), the fishing instance was all but a dizzy memory that White remembers from his childhood. When White and his son were in the boat, memories had flooded his head, “the boat was the same green color and the ribs broken in the same place”(534), and it was the simple niceties that held the most impact. White continuously through the text is caught in a vivid memory and is captivated but the vividness of it …show more content…
As his son begins to venture out of the realm of his fathers help and expertise, he notices that the lake doesn’t have the same appeal it used to have and a sign of getting closer to death. Although White uses vivid imagery and sensory details to explain his self-deprecation and challenge of real and inception, his intensely personal tone can at times over bear the true meaning of change and growing up. His constant switch between the past and present showcases that he himself can’t even realize what is in front of him. He had a constant feud with himself “everywhere I went I had trouble making out which was I, the one walking at my side, the one walking in my pants”(537), however White makes a valid point in life, sometimes we let life and memories get in the way and its harder to notice what we have in front of us. White was to focused on his past recollection that he wasn’t surveying his son’s growth and maturity and was missing out making memories with him, because one day his son will be in the same boat as White, not wanting to see the truth in the irony of