307630369-Once-More-to-the-Lake 2222222222222 PDF

Preview

Summary

Download 307630369-Once-More-to-the-Lake 2222222222222 PDF

Description

Farzana Akthar “Once More to the Lake” by: E.B. White Critical Analysis: Final Draft “Timeless Connection” Reminiscence takes over when the narrator flashes back to the summer of 1904 where his father took him to a lake in Maine. This event was one of ritual; it was something that happened every summer. One summer afternoon after the progression of many years the narrator gets an unwavering feeling from the restless and fearful nature of the sea water (White 115). Once this feeling became too strong to ignore, he had to go revisit the lake with his son. The unwavering feeling was the basis for the narrator’s internal struggle with the passage of time. The narrator was growing older and wanted to relive the days of his youth and he did so by creating an illusion. In the illusion the son acted as a medium to pause time because he represented the narrator’s youth. The narrator desperately needed to stop his aging. To accomplish this, he tried to create a timeless connection with his son that got strengthened by the illusion that he was his son, but ultimately, because of the contrast of past with present, the connection was ephemeral and deteriorated by the end of their trip. The narrator is envisioning a scenario that is timeless as possible to avoid the reality that every person is a creature of age. This starts to occur when he observes his son doing everything the narrator had once done in the past. The narrator seemed to be living a dual existence, one which was his son and the other his father (White 116). According to Platizky, it is hard to imagine yourself as existing in three separate times in three separate identities. This was exactly what the narrator was doing. In the present time, he was imagining his father saying the words or

making a gesture instead of him. In the past he was imagining himself in the shoes of his son doing all of the actions his son did in the present. Through it all he was still trying to maintain his own identity by suppressing the creepy sensation. Platizky connects the narrator stepping in and out of different identities and times to a quote from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. He says “You cannot step twice into the same river.” The river will give the illusion that you can (Platizky 176). The river in this case refers to both the father and son of the narrator. The son however is the main force that allows for the illusion to sustain itself because he actually exists in the present day. With this illusion it is possible to stop the flow of time and assume as many identities as the narrator wanted to; in this case it would be his father and his son. This allowed for the strengthening of the connection between the narrator and the son. The narrator wanted to first sustain this illusion because he had idealized the campsite in Maine as a child. He didn’t think there was any place in the world similar to that lake (White 114). Because of how close he was to the lake, his mind was able to produce an illusion that would be harder to break than if he were to have vacationed to a different location. The eternal connection was conceived in a setting close to the narrator’s heart which allowed for the initial strength. If the narrator could assume the identities of himself, his father and his son simultaneously, there would be no passage of time. This flow of time is stopped specifically when the narrator describes similarities between past and present. An example of this would be the fishing scene at the lake where he states that there had been no years between the firefly he saw in the present and the firefly from the past (White 116). This pausing of time is essential in preserving the strength of the ‘timeless’ connection. If the narrator could perfectly interchange between identities, he would be like the lake, “eternally regenerative” (Platizky 176).

However this is not the case as the connection seemed to have been waning from the very start. It is heavily indicated by the specific language used by E.B. White. Professor Atkins notices White’s meticulous sentence structure. White uses “It would be not I but my father” instead of “It would not be I but my father”. This shows that White emphasized the fact that the narrator perceived himself to be different from his father. White was showing the difference without literally saying it (Atkins 153). White was implying the illusion was breaking apart through this sentence structure. The narrator specifies that a sound broke the illusion. The truth however, is very different. It is the minute passage of time during the trip that gradually tears away at the illusion. The sound was just there as a closer. There is simply no way of keeping time away because it will always move forward. Fighting against this fact, White goes on to first describe the lake as the place he once remembered with the peacefulness and jollity. He includes the new outboard motor sounds only as the defining moment that caused time to be set in motion again (White 118). The illusion which strengthened the attachment between the father and the son did have specific points of weakness which caused it to eventually dissolve. The narrator can’t fuse identities with his son because of their generational gap. As explained before, the outboard motor sounds do dissolve the illusion. Another point to notice is that his son loves the new outboards while the narrator is still stuck in the past with the old inboards. Platizky found an irony in the whole situation. In the illusion, the father wants to see his son as a mirror image of his own self. Ironically he brought “historical time” to the lake by bringing his son. This historical time is a testament to how old the lake is and this effectively breaks the illusion that the narrator is his son (Platizky 176). The difference between the father and son eventually overwhelms the difference between past and present showing an additional weakening of the connection. This is due to the

concept of authority. Authority is disguised as the son’s desire of control over devices and gadgets such as the motorboats. Another look into E.B. White’s language shows his excessive use of the word ‘then’ in describing the processes of operating the motorboats (White 119). He includes time yet again indirectly to show the discord between father and son (Atkins 153). The difference between father and son is even stronger when they change paths at the end. The son goes for a swim in the lake while the father acts as an observer. This already shows that the father cannot perform the same tasks as the son which started to cripple their connection. The narrator felt the chill of death as the son pulled up his wet swimming trunks (White 121). This was the final and ultimate example of the deterioration of the timeless connection. The chill of death completely destroyed the illusion and brought the father back into the reality that he was aging, ending the essay at this climax. Looking further into the immortal connection, the son and this concept of time can serve as both a means of destruction and preservation for the attachment. The son becomes the one that creates and destroys the narrator’s illusion that he is his son. This relates to the “My Son, My Executioner” poem by Donald Hall. In this poem, the son paradoxically becomes the “instrument of immortality” and the “document of bodily decay” (Platizky 177). He is the instrument of immortality because the narrator views his son as a mirror image of his past self. The son is the document of bodily decay because in going swimming, the son does something that the narrator couldn’t do. This shows the aging or decay of his body. In his writing, White integrates past and present. In the last paragraph of the essay, the observer or the narrator becomes the observed or the son. Time then becomes an instrument used for both destruction and preservation. The timeless connection overall had a negative impact on the narrator. He ends up losing the battle with time as reality erodes the illusion that he was his son by transposition. The

narrators’ attempt to step in and out of desired personalities decentered him. If he did attempt to become one with his son or his father, he would lose his own identity. Losing his own identity would occur only if he lost his sanity which is his way back into reality from the illusion (Platizky 176). White’s writing is very efficient and to the point. He presents mundane and normal ideas very eloquently. He focuses his attention to the reader which allows the reader to focus on the main idea of timelessness. In his language he specifically leaves out names and uses phrases such as “the boy” to describe people. His writing is not purely personal or autobiographical or even just historical (Atkins 153). The narrator is fighting a battle against time and White’s writing truly showcases it. In this essay, the narrator ends up losing this struggle against time and the timeless connection he created. The connection that was so desperately made ended up being a short delusional trip to the past. This attachment to the past was brought upon by the narrator’s feelings towards the restless and fearful nature of the sea water. He was growing older and there was nothing he could do to transcend the wall of time. It became increasingly apparent as the essay went on that there was no strong foundation for the connection. The hummingbird, a representation of moving forward, could serve as a contrast to the narrator who wanted to be stuck in time. A hummingbird that only has a short lifespan of five years has to live each and every day as if it were its last. Humans have more time on earth which gives them a stubborn outlook on life. They never want to let go and in the narrator’s case, he goes as far as creating the illusion that he was his son to retain his age. The inevitability of aging and death shouldn’t be something that the narrator is scared of but rather it should be celebrated as a wonderful cycle. Instead of making the timeless connection with his son, it would seem better to enjoy his remaining days on earth with no regrets.

Works Cited

Atkins, G. Douglas. E.B. White: The Essayist as First-class Writer. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Print. Cooley, Thomas. ""Once More to the Lake" By: E.B. White." The Norton Sampler: Short Essays for Composition. New York: W.W.Norton, 2003. 114-21. Print. Platizky, Roger S. ""Once More to the Lake": A Mythic Interpretation." College Literature 15.2 (1988): 171-79. JSTOR. Web. 22 Nov. 2015. ....