"Once More On The Lake" Reaction To The Reading

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorCollege, Undergraduate February 2008

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"Once more on the lake" is an imaginative and gracefully detailed essay written by E.B. White. In this well detailed essay White writes about one vacation spot he would go to with his parents as a kid. This beautiful gift of nature was a lake that he described so vividly in his essay. White has not revisited this lake since he was a boy with his father, and now he will return with his son and him being the authority. Though White feels that the immortal lake has not been unshaken by years of dismissal, he can still tell that some things aren't the same, He has grown older and the times have changed. White precisely demonstrates the immortality of nature and the concept of vacation, in the short mortal life of a human.

Nature's immortal Beauty hasn't changed much since Whites childhood, and vacationers still settle there for relaxing time away from society.

After years of not returning to the trustworthy body of water he loves so dearly, He revisits with his young son. In his mind he did not want things to have changed, only wanted the years that have passed to seem as a mirage and that he wasn't getting older. Arriving at the lake, White describes summer at the lake so nicely, a pattern of life indelible, the fade-proof lake, the unshatterable woods, and the scent of juniper in the air. All these untouchable aspects of nature and life haven't changed and at this moment White feels secure things are the same. The constant reliability of the lake and how it hasn't changed one bit, seeing his son venturing through the woods becoming comfortable with his surroundings, all this rekindles his memories of a time when he was just a boy. White felt nature had not let him down, that nature is permanent and immortal.

Nature is still what it used to be, but the years have passed and the never ending clock of time has been ticking away. And White is noticing this as the essay goes along. He speaks of the sound of the place, the unfamiliar sound of the outboard motors. This was the one thing that would set the years moving, the one thing that would make that mirage of years that had passed seem a reality. White reminisces on the sound of the in board motors, their gentle purr, a sound that was a sedative for sleep. Another thing that had changed was the middle track was missing. There had always been three tracks to choose from, and white had missed the middle alternative. Not only has little inconspicuous things like that have changed, this time at the lake white was now the authority. He saw himself in every word and gesture he made as his father and pictured himself in the place of his son. Even in the last sentence of the essay white speaks of the mortality of humans, seeing himself performing the acts of his father to his son gave him the chill of death in his groin.

White outstandingly demonstrates that in mortality of nature and the concept of vacation that will never fade and also the short moral life of the human. How one lake could make him feel so close with his kinship to nature. But time passes, and the beautiful landscape will continue to be beautiful, but in the eyes of other alive and those to come. We are on this earth only for a short while, but earth's majesty is a gift from heaven that will live on forever until the end of time. Although white noticed the constants and it changes of the lake he knew passing on this relic to his son will make him feel the way he felt coming to the lake. And leaving this lasting imprint on his son as the lake did to him.