FREE ESSAY ON ONCE MORE TO THE LAKE BY E.B. WHITE

ONCE MORE TO THE LAKE BY E.B. WHITE

Once More to the Lake by E.B. White 
Once More to the Lake, by E.B. White was an essay in which a father struggles to find
himself. The essay is about a little boy and his father. They go to a lake where the
father had been in his childhood years. The father looks back at those years and tries to
relive the moments through his son's eyes. He knows he can't, and has difficulty dealing
with the fact that he can't go back in time.
E.B. White's way of letting the reader know that the father is in a way depressed, is
through great detail and description. The story mentions how the lake has changes since
the father had seen it last. How the once gravel roads have been paved over, and the sail
boats are now replace with boats with outboard motors. As the reader, one can sense a
feeling of how the father isn't able to adapt to these changes.
The little boy in the story, the son, also doesn't seem to appreciate the lake as much as
the father did when he was growing up. Like how when he was a boy, he would wake up early
to fish. Now the father wishes his son would do the same. It seemed the little boy just
too the trip for granted. He didn't appear to be as appreciative as the father once was.
The father describes the view as pretty much being the same. How things felt the same,
like the moss on his feet and such. He didn't feel that the lake had changed any, but
everything around it did.
This is when the idea of a duel personality comes into picture. The father can almost see
himself as a child, doing the things he wished his son would do. When he was young he
would get up especially early to fix his fishing pole and even help set the dinner table.
Then he realizes that his son doesn't do any of these things, making the father feel as
if the trip just isn't the same.
As the story progresses, the father begins to point out the differences of his once
peaceful get-a way. How when arriving was something to look forward to, seeing all of the
other family's greet you, the madness of the train station, and the smells of the
wilderness. All of those things were gone, replace by motor boats that would wake you up
in the middle of a summer slumber.
Lastly the father brings up the thunderstorm. To me this represents the birth of a new
him. I say this because once the rain clears up and the dark skies disappear, he begins
to look at his son, and the entire trip in a different light. He forgets the years of
old, and realizes that he is not his son, he stops trying to live his life through his
son's eyes. When at the end he feel the cold chill of death at his groin, I feel this is
him letting the trip be just a trip, not pushing his son to do exactly what he once did.
He lets the boy do what he wants, not do what the father had done all those years down by
the lake.