Analysis Of Once More To The Lake By E. B. White

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Once More to the Lake by E.B. White has been criticized by many who say that the concluding paragraph ruins his beautiful essay; in comparison to the way Mark Twain ‘ruined’ Huckleberry Finn with his conclusion. I believe that the ending shows what the author truly learned from his experience with his son. Throughout the essay, he goes into detail about this internal conflict of not being able to distinguish between the memories he shared with his father and what he was sharing with his son. At the conclusion of the composition, White describes the realization that he is approaching his life’s end. I agree with these criticisms because the essay has so much lovely description that was just completely destroyed by his final realization. White describes and reminisces on the trips he took to a lake in Maine with his father as a child in the first paragraph. He then explains that he decided to take his own son, who had never been in a lake before. White realizes how similar the lake is to how it used to be shortly into the essay. The strange occurrences of his ‘dual existence’ begin the first morning, when White and his son go fishing, “I looked at the boy, who was silently watching his fly, and it was my hands that held his rod, my eyes watching. I felt dizzy and didn’t know …show more content…

Concluding with the metaphor “the chill of death:” shows that when he sees his son is growing up (and so is he), the atmosphere of the essay changes from his wonderful memories at the lake, to how depressing it is to have to grow old and be the father figure. The fact that his son is being able to experience his memories should make him happy, but I feel as if he is even a little jealous of his son for this because the reality of it is that he is growing old and there’s no stopping it. The gloominess of this conclusion truly does interfere with the initial description and elegant wording to make it somber and

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