Once More to the Lake by E. B. White: Growing Up with Time

“Once More to the Lake” “Once More to the Lake” is about a father who takes his son to a camp he had visited often as a boy with his own father. While on this trip, the man often reminisces about how this camp has not changed a bit and that he often feels like he has gone back in time and is the boy he was when he first came, not the father he now is like when the speaker says “[…] or I would be saying something, and suddenly it would be not I but my father who was saying the words […]” (White 371). The purpose of this essay is that in life we all know we have to grow up at some time, but like the man in this piece, we all have to realize that it is okay to keep those memories we formed as a child but not to stay stuck it the past and need to learn to separate from your childhood self and recognize you are getting older. The audience this essay was meant for are those of us who are at the in between stage in life. It can be that point where you are still in the mind set where you want to be a child, but also know that it is coming to that time where you know you will need to mature and become an adult. For example, the speaker says “[…] an unfamiliar nervous sound of the outboard motors. This was the note that jarred, the one thing that would sometimes break the illusion and set the years moving […]” (White 374). This essay could also be targeting those who are stuck in their ways and are trapped in their adult life and do not look back on their juvenile ways of the past. The speaker of this essay is very much stuck in his past and does not want to take notice of the fact that he is a grown man and not the child he often flashes back to. He seems to be stuck in the one area of his life he felt was the best part, so he appears somewhat immature, but has the beginning signs of becoming aware he is no longer that child, but an adult. In this essay, “Once More to the Lake,” the speaker shows many examples of pathos, one of them being when he mentions “[…]

Cited: White, E.B. “Once More to the Lake”. The Seagull Reader: Essays. Ed. Joseph Kelly. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2008. 369-376. Print.