Memories can help one go back into the past, maybe as a child, a rebellious teenager, or as a maturing adult. The two texts “Once More to the Lake” by E.B. White, and “Forgetfulness” by Billy Collins explores this topic in their writing, developing a common theme that memories are an important part of every person. For instance, Collins writes about how people tend to forget many memories over time without realizing it, such as books they had once read, or math that they haven’t used in a while. On the other hand, “Once More to the Lake” is about a father who brings his son to a lake that he had often visited as a child. Both Billy Collins and E.B. White use a peaceful diction and various literary devices to develop the overarching theme that
…show more content…
In “Once More to the Lake”, there are several examples of similes, such as “In the daytime, in the mornings, these motors made a petulant, irritable sound; at night, in the still evening when the afterglow lit the water, they whined about one’s ears like mosquitoes.” (White 10) In this quote, the narrator compares the sound of the boat’s motors to the annoying sound of mosquitoes, which is a different sound than what he had remembered. His irritation to the change suggests that the narrator valued the memories of his past. In addition, he says later on that “I kept remembering everything, lying in bed in the mornings-- the small steamboat that had a long rounded stern like the lip of a Ubangi, and how quietly she ran on the moonlight sails, when the older boys played their mandolins and the girls sang and we ate doughnuts dipped in sugar, and how sweet the music was on the water in the shining light, and what it had felt like to think about girls then.” (White 11) Yet again, the narrator reflects on his past using a simile, comparing the boat’s stern to an Ubangi’s lips, emphasizing the importance of these memories. On the other hand, Billy Collins says in one part of his poem that “No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No
In “Once More to the Lake”, there are several examples of similes, such as “In the daytime, in the mornings, these motors made a petulant, irritable sound; at night, in the still evening when the afterglow lit the water, they whined about one’s ears like mosquitoes.” (White 10) In this quote, the narrator compares the sound of the boat’s motors to the annoying sound of mosquitoes, which is a different sound than what he had remembered. His irritation to the change suggests that the narrator valued the memories of his past. In addition, he says later on that “I kept remembering everything, lying in bed in the mornings-- the small steamboat that had a long rounded stern like the lip of a Ubangi, and how quietly she ran on the moonlight sails, when the older boys played their mandolins and the girls sang and we ate doughnuts dipped in sugar, and how sweet the music was on the water in the shining light, and what it had felt like to think about girls then.” (White 11) Yet again, the narrator reflects on his past using a simile, comparing the boat’s stern to an Ubangi’s lips, emphasizing the importance of these memories. On the other hand, Billy Collins says in one part of his poem that “No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No