Accepting mortality as an inevitable part of life is an obstacle that every must undertake at some time in his or her life. Author E.B. White encounters such a struggle in his essay “Once More to the Lake”, in which he recalls taking his son to a lake retreat in Maine that his father took him to every first week of August in his youth. During the trip, White sees the lake through his son’s eyes but notices variations in the environment as a result of time. He begins to feel more like his father as he watches his son, but has trouble accepting that he, just like the lake, is changing and aging as time passes on.
White talks about the experience as a child camp out with his father in 1904 on the lake in Maine. During this White gets the great state of mind that he one time had as a child camp out and determined to release them again. “I took along my son, who had never had any fresh water up his nose who had seen lily pads only from train windows” (White 724). White is now a father and has a child and he decided to take his son to the lake as his father did to him. He keeps reminding the memories that he shared with father, and since he cannot go back to his childhood he teaching his son to follow the same path as he did.
White’s essay, “Once More to the Lake”, White comes to realize his own mortality through a visit to the lake, a setting of both White’s past and present. While White initially perceives the lake as unchanged on the surface, he realizes a significant difference – he himself has changed. Through vivid details of the lake, White conveys his realization that time causes change inevitably. Using imagery depicting movement, White presents his initial perception of an unchanging lake. When White takes his son fishing, he enters an illusion that convinces him he is his childhood self: “ I lowered the tip of mine into the water, tentatively, pensively dislodging the fly, which darted two feet away, poised, darted two feet back, and came to rest again a little farther up the rod.
The uses of selection of detail in the story suggests that this period of time is when things are changing. The fact that it’s the 15th summer for the boy and it’s the 8th time he’s been out with his father, shows that they have bonded and the boy is finally letting go. Being 15 for a young man is really pivotal for his development and he might steer away from his parents in the beginning. Then at the end of the excerpt, Bill and the son leave to go fishing without waking up the father, that would seem like nothing, but it is the fact that they didn’t awaken the father to let him know what was going on. This is the falling relationship between a son who always looked at his father as a role model but now wants someone knew to look at…simply because he feels as if there is something more this person could teach him.
Second, White mentions many of the things he would do at the lake as a child and so these are the things his son also loves to do. Everything he sees his son do makes it seem as if the son was he. A lot of the times White gets confused because he is not sure which shoes he’s in. For example, they go fishing and White says, “I felt dizzy and didn’t know which rod I was at the end of.” This reminds him of what he used to do at the lake
First, one of the challenges Dave Pelzer faced in his youth was finally being taken out of his mother’s house and put into foster care. In the beginning, he thinks that being a foster kid is going to be good but it took him a while to realize that it wasn’t what he dreamt it to be. Though he was away from abuse from his mother, foster care meant constant move for him. With all the moves he had to go through, he never really got the chance to fit in and become part of something. As soon as he felt like he was finally settling down, he left the family he was staying with.
(Page 272) He returned to school the following morning. His fathers disapproved of him dropping out; the fathers influence on the son was enough to make him change his decision. The mother was not pleased but this and could not believe her own son would "choose useless books over the parents they gave him life." (Page 272) This lead to influencing the narrator to join his father on the boat when his uncle left his father in order to support his growing family. He told his father that he would "remain with him as long as he lived" and continue to fish with him.
Grey Fire is searching for beauty beyond beauty; a land of water that was only visible to him when he was a child. He has grasped onto this vision for years, and no doubt has used this moment as a symbol for the beautiful years of his youth. His last memory of the land of water is the pain after he cut is small toes off. This struck me as a beautifully simple metaphor of
Each ghostly reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father,“ spoke the powerful tribe leader. His passion is expressed towards the developers of a construction plan for the European immigrants of the time. He’s feared the day when people of an unfamiliar race would come to take over his reservation, and now that day has come. The imagery, personification, and symbolism in his writing is shown to let the reader feel the power of emotion underneath his words, feel the way he felt, make them think differently than they did before, and to simply be moved.
Therefore, it brings changes in characters or thought such as in attitude, behaviour, and understanding. In the above related paragraph, has shown Ant’s relationship and perception about his father before involved in the journey. And after journey, his relationship and point views has changed about his father. But here journey offer new experiences such Tony also learnt new things during journey. But before journey he hadn’t known how to react or treat his son.