E. B. White's Essay: The Once More To The Lake

The meaning of life is to find the meaning of life. Is it not? We all go through each day trying to figure out which road out the infinite amount of paths will lead us in a better direction where happiness is prominent and society is flawless. However, not every single human being is going to fit on that narrow, one-lane highway to success. Bad choices, accidents, fate, family matters, society, temptation, anger, rage, addiction, and loss of hope can all be deciding factors in opting to choose that wrong path to self-destruction. The adverse thing is, once you've traveled so far down the road, you get so discouraged that you feel like you can never turn back or make up for the "lost time."

E. B. White's story "Once More to the Lake" is about a man who revisits a lake from his childhood to discover that his life has lost placidity.  The man remembers his childhood as he remembers the lake; peaceful and still.  Spending time at the lake as an adult has made the man realize that his life has become unsettling and restless, like the tides of the ocean.  Having brought his son to this place of the past with him, the man makes inevitable comparisons between his own son and his childhood self, and between himself as an adult and the way he remembers his father from his childhood perspective.  The man's experience at the lake with his son is the moment he discovers his own

The essay “ Stone Soup” by Barbara Kingsolver and the essay “Once More to the Lake” by E. B White have a multifold of comparisons and a multifarious differences. In “Stone Soup” the fundamental issue is explaining that broken families are not actually broken. In “Once More to the Lake” the root of the story is that the father wants to carry on the traditions on with his that he has a child on the lake.“A tradition is a belief or behavior passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past”(Tradition). Although White and his son are exceedingly close unlike Kingsolver’s family, they are both families and they both love each other to a great extent.

The short story, Once More to the Lake, is about a father who takes his son on a camping trip to a lake in Maine. The father sees that the camp is exactly how he remembers it as he goes through time of reminiscence. As he goes back to nostalgic memories, he sees, through his son, that the camp is the same as when he was a child; however, his time at the camp reveals the true meaning of what time is. Time is a continuing process of the past, present, and future.

Nature has a powerful way of portraying good vs. bad, which parallels to the same concept intertwined with human nature. In the story “Greasy Lake” by T. Coraghessan Boyle, the author portrays this through the use of a lake by demonstrating its significance and relationship to the characters. At one time, the Greasy Lake was something of beauty and cleanliness, but then came to be the exact opposite. Through his writing, Boyle demonstrates how the setting can be a direct reflection of the characters and the experiences they encounter.

Originally the narrator is as corrupted as the lake; though born pure and “clear” he becomes tainted by the “beer” and wildness of his culture. As the character ventures to the lake on the night that the majority of the story takes place in, it is not difficult for the reader to correctly predict that some action he takes will lead to some unfortunate event for him and his friends. The narrator comments that losing his keys after unknowingly instigating a fight is “[his] first mistake, the one that opened the whole floodgate,” (131) foreshadowing the grave and life-threatening events to come. After nearly killing a man and nearly raping a woman, the narrator finds himself in the murky waters of Greasy Lake next to a rotting body of a dead biker. However, after emerging from the water after what appear to be many hours, the narrator realizes how repugnant and unpleasant Greasy Lake is and realizes after seeing the dead body in the lake what happens to the people that frequent the lake. Since Greasy Lake represents the society and culture that the narrator is living in, the fact that he realizes that the lake is this repulsing is a self-realization that his life style is the same.

E.B White, author of “Once More to the Lake” explores the dynamic relationship between father and son to convey the power of memory and the inevitable chill of mortality. The symbol of the dragonfly and the lake creates a sense of duality while introducing subtle changes throughout the essay.

This line is the epitome of remembrance. We all look back on our childhood and reminisce on the joyful moments in our life. We cling on to the details, remembering what the scene smelled, tasted, and looked like. This is exactly what E.B White is portraying in his passage “Once More to the Lake.” This line is a

The author symbolizes the water as transition and spirituality, the lake is symbolized as the elusive badness the boys want so badly. The narrator notices that none of them are as bad as they try to act. After that night the narrator realizes he cannot make it in that life, rather the narrator wants to go to the safety and security of his home and parents.

This passage is symbolic to the point that it relates to the boys. Life is like the lake as in life can bring clarity and peacefulness or it can be murky and destructive. To the Narrator the Lake is a crucial life changing moment when he realizes that he is just a child and not this bad ass who can take on the world. “I was nineteen, a mere child, an infant, and here in the space of five minutes I’d struck down one greasy character and blundered into the waterlogged carcass of a second” (125).

It was at one time, but not when the speaker and his friends were at it. “The Indians had called it Wakan, a reference to the clarity of its waters. Not it was fetid and murky, the mud banks glittering with broken glass and strewn beer cans and the charred remains of bonfires” (1). In a way, the lake represents the speaker. At one time (before the night he spent at greasy lake), he was like the lake. He was free of litter and garbage. He was clear and pure. After the night at the lake, the speaker was changed. He experienced what fear really was. He also learned what “being bad” was all about. He let go of his innocence. His childhood was over after the night at the lake. He was a man. He was a man who committed a

What is the meaning of life? Well known Greek philosphers such as Socrates and Plato believed that our purpose in this life was to gain knowledge in preparation for the next life. Other Philosophers such as Epicurus believed that pleasure is the main goal in life. After giving these ideas lots of thought, I have come to my own conclusion that the true meaning of life is far more complex than either of these; far too complex for any human to fully comprehend. In fact these two different philosophies are only part of the grand picture. If it were that easy for men to figure out our lives wouldn't be so messed up now. The meaning of life revolves around many different things. I

As the story moves along, we see that the women of the town are in awe of the man they imagine he was in life. They imagine him, handsome as he is, to be of great value. They say that “if that magnificent man had lived in the villege…his wife would be the happiest woman.” The men of the village seem to pale in comparison to the vision of the drowned man. With

The Indian's feeling of the lake as heavenly is made clear in the tale, in which the individuals who condemnations close to the lake were gobbled up. In any case the villagers too put down the lake, not by reviling close it in any case by seeing it just as something they can use to wash their dishes, and along these lines not acknowledging or even recognizing its hallowed beauty. In contrast, Thoreau accepts he can find out about himself by investigating the lake. For Thoreau, John Field is a man who has a place with society and is reluctant to go for the way of life that would free him from the imperatives that make him troubled and trap him in an existence of obligation and abundance. Thoreau's experience with John clears out him feeling elated in his freedom furthermore, recommitted to his way of life, which permits him to appreciate the better products of