READING:
Read E. B. White's (author of Charlotte's Web) "Once More to the Lake." This famous essay is a nature essay, but it's main thesis has to do with life experiences--specifically father and son relationships as well as memory.
Go to:
https://genius.com/E-b-white-once-more-to-the-lake-annotated
or
http://wheretheclassroomends.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/White_OnceMoretotheLake1.pdf
Audiobook:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehbtwHySuJA
Analysis:
http://study.com/academy/lesson/once-more-to-the-lake-summary-theme-analysis.html
Please answer the following questions on the blog:
1 What is the central idea of White's essay—the key feeling he evokes, the key concern he
expresses? Cite a passage that you think evokes the main feeling or idea most directly.
2 How would you describe the mood of the piece, the tone of voice? Cite one or two
passages where you hear this tone most clearly.
3 Find two images that White uses to show how the lake has changed since he was there
as a boy and comment on them.
4 Find two images that suggest that the lake has not changed and comment on them?
5 Find one or two images that seem to convey both change and sameness and comment
on them.
6 What contrast does White make between the sea and a lake, and why does he make this
contrast in his opening paragraph?
7 What happens in the closing paragraph? How does it reinforce or give some closure to
the central concerns of the essay? How does it make you feel?
Take the quiz (quizzes) mostly for fun and a check on your reading comprehension:
http://grammar.about.com/od/tests/a/ebwlakequiz.htmWriting:
Continue to work on your essays!
1. The central idea of White’s “Once More To The Lake” is to not get caught up in the every changing world and value the little things, such as nature and its continuity that is so rare to find in the world and in people. “It was the arrival of this fly that convinced me beyond any doubt that everything was as it always had been, that the years were a mirage and there had been no years” (White).
ReplyDelete2. The tone of the piece is extremely reminiscent. White reflects on his time here with his father who had since passed, which is kind of perfect since this was the trip were he brought his own son to the lake for the first time. White also reflects on time and how he has changed so much yet his beloved lake has not, preserving all the incredible memories White has at the lake. “…suddenly it would be not I but my father who was saying the words or making the gesture” (White).
3. Despite the great similarities, there are slight changes that White notices that shows how time has actually effected the lake on a small scale. “There had always been three tracks to choose from…now the choice was narrowed down to two” (White).
4. “…the boat was the same…the dried blood from yesterday’s catch: (White). White specifically mentions the boat and the blood because of the beloved memories he has with his father on the lake. Throughout the entire essay, White continually mentions going fishing with his father, which he does with his son. The repetition of this image proves its profound effect those times had on White.
5. As previously mentioned, fishing with his father had a profound effect on White. Despite his father no longer being with him, the memories they shared in his childhood live on at the lake and are passed on to White’s own son. “…he wince[d] slightly as he pulled up around his vitals the small, soggy, icy garment. As he buckled the swollen belt suddenly my groin felt the chill of death” (White).
6. “…the restlessness of the tides and the fearful cold of the sea water and the incessant wind which blows across the afternoon and into the evening make me wish for the placidity of a lake in the woods” (White). White mentions the ocean in the first paragraph in order to give the audience a crystal clear image of the lake. When readers imagine a body of water, they think of waves crashing rather than White’s lake; White explicitly expresses the difference because it is imperative that the audience clearly understand the setting in order for White’s message to get across.
7. “…the restlessness of the tides and the fearful cold of the sea water and the incessant wind which blows across the afternoon and into the evening make me wish for the placidity of the lake in the woods” (White). White spends the majority of the essay reflecting on his time at the lake and the time he spent with his father here. In the last paragraph, however, White focuses in on his son, hoping him passing down the lake has as great of an effect as it did on him in his childhood. White also realizes once again how the lake as not changed over the years through his son experiencing things almost identical to White’s memories.
1 The central idea of White’s essay is how despite time changing you, the audience of nature, nature itself may not change when you revisit it. The key feeling he seems to revisit is a sense of nostalgia as well as the idea of how aged he seems. The main idea and feeling is expressed in “It was the arrival of this fly that convinced me… that everything was as it always had been” (White).
ReplyDelete2 Again, the mood and tone of the piece centralizes themselves with his nostalgia, as exemplified in the passage when he sees the fly, or even as it continues as he rambles that “the boat was the same boat, the same color…” (White) and the usage of the word “same” pushes this feeling of nostalgia for the author. Even the previous passage has the author stating that the “dual existence” (White) he was experiencing was from the tackle of nostalgia in how he was both his father and his child at the same time. “It gave… a creepy sensation” (White).
3 “There had been three tracks to choose from in choosing which track to walk to; now the choice was narrowed down to two” (White). A strange observation, had it not been the theme of the essay to point out the sameness as when he was a boy. It’s only obvious to see him note the changes and therefore adopt a tone melancholy from he sees after coming back as a father.
“The only thing that was wrong now, really was the sound of the place, an unfamiliar nervous sound of the outboard motors” (White). This is where E.B. White really gets into his nature essay and how technology changed as he aged, driving away the beauty of this lake that he cherished so much.
4 “the boat was the same boat, the same color… ribs broken in the same places” (White). Not only does it give an image of how White was seeing (as a “dual existence”) but also could be considered how time travels by, only to have certain things unaffected by its passage.
“There had been no years between the ducking of this dragonfly and the other one—the one that was part of memory” (White). It allows the reader to see and understand the duality of White’s sight at that moment, to see the dragonfly, unchanged, from his out of body experience to seeing it as his boyish self to seeing it as the father he was.
5 “Everywhere we went I had trouble making out which was I, the one walking at my side, the one walking in my pants” (White). Many of the author’s descriptions of his dual experience could count as both change and sameness in his eyes, but its interesting having him admit to the sensation as he is in motion, rather than in thought like in the boat.
“dual existence… I would be saying something, and suddenly it would be not I but my father” (White). I’ve been milking on this passage, but truly it does create the sensation of how White feels a change, yet a sameness to his past memories.
6 The contrast White makes is his fear of the cold grasp of the sea, which makes him yearn for the “placidity of a lake in the woods” (White). He makes this contrast in order to, not only build up his admiration and adoration of the lake, but to establish that the tone of the author should be warm, at least in regards to the subject in question/
7 Well, certainly the closing paragraph is a strange one. First and foremost the events of the conclusion is the “revival of an old melodrama” (White) But the purpose of it is to truly wrap up the essay. It gives closure to his “dual existence” in the last line, where he feels the detachment from he to his son but also the sameness that prevailed throughout the essay, as “he buckled the swollen belt suddenly my groin felt the chill of death” (White). Which is off-putting, but I didn’t realize what. It was in the notes that I realized it was off-putting because it was his realization of him going to die soon.
1.The central idea of White's essay is about letting your own mind wander back to past memories. White expresses his concern about how the lake has changed and his feeling of his son being him and him being his father. The feelings from the past had not changed even though he was older. "I began to wonder what it would be like. I wondered how time would have marred this unique, this holy spot."
ReplyDelete2. The mood of this nature essay seemed annoyed but comforting. There is a sense of disappointment towards the end of the essay when White talks about the new irritating noises around the lake. "An unfamiliar nervous sound of the motorboats." It seems comforting because his experience of the lake had not changed. "It was the arrival of this fly that convinced me beyond any doubt that everything was as it always been, that the years were a mariage and there had been no years."
3. "Except there was more Coca Cola and not so much Moxie and root beer and birch beer and sarsaparilla." The flavors that White associated with the lake were now gone and new ones had come along, it was classy and old fashioned like he remembered. "The middle track was missing, the one with the marks of the hooves and the splotches of dried, flaky manure. There had always been three tracks to choose from in choosing which track to walk in; now the choice was narrowed down to two." As a child White always had the option of three paths he could have taken but over time one of those choices was taken away.
4. "And the boat was the same boat, the same color green and the ribs broken in the same places." The boat he had known as a child was still the same color and was still broken in the same spots it was left. " The waitresses were the same country girls, there having been no passage of time, only the illusion of it as in a dropped curtain--the waitresses were still fifteen." White when back to something that he predicted must have changed but over the number of years it was still the same.
5."We would walk out with a bottle of pop apiece and sometimes the pop would backfire up our noses and hurt." This is a situation White remembers doing but with his father and now he is the father and he is no longer the son.
6. White uses the contrast between the sea and lake because the sea represents the fear White feels, where the lake is his simplistic and comforting place his body is yearning for.
7.The closing paragraph is stranger than the others, because it is closing up the dual selves he believes he is experiencing while his time at the lake. The last paragraph closes White's childhood and opens his sons.
1. The central idea of E.B. White’s essay “Once More to the Lake” is that even though he has left the lake and returned years later it has not changed. Even though he may change the world hardly would. Everything stayed as it had before.
ReplyDelete2. The tone of this piece is a sort of reminiscent one. White goes back to the times of when he was a child comparing them with the things he does now, “It seemed to me, as I kept remembering all this, that those times and those summers had been infinitely precious and worth saving.” he seems glad that he remembered the stuff from his past. Using the past experiences he is able to make the current times more enjoyable.
3. “....The only thing that was wrong now, really, was the sound of the place, 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. In those other summertimes, all motors were inboard; and when they were at a little distance, the noise they made was a sedative, an ingredient of summer sleep. They were one-cylinder and two-cylinder engines, and some were make-and-break and some were jump-spark, but they all made a sleepy sound across the lake. The one-lungers throbbed and fluttered, and the twin-cylinder ones purred and purred, and that was a quiet sound too. But now the campers all had outboards. In the daytime, in the hot mornings, these motors made a petulant, irritable sound; at night, in the still evening when the afterglow lit the water, they whined about one's ears like mosquitoes.” One thing that changed about the lake was the sound itself. It had changed from a peaceful lake to a noisy one. It wasn’t as still with quiet motors as it once was. It also tells of how everything became more modern and not so “old fashioned”. “Outside, the road was tarred and cars stood in front of the store. Inside, all was just as it had always been, except there was more Coca Cola and not so much Moxie and root beer and birch beer and sarsaparilla.”
4. “... the lake was cool and motionless, remembered how the bedroom smelled of the lumber it was made of and of the wet woods whose scent entered through the screen. The partitions in the camp were thin and did not extend clear to the top of the rooms, and as I was always the first up I would dress softly so as not to wake the others, and sneak out into the sweet outdoors and start out in the canoe, keeping close along the shore in the long shadows of the pines.” It wasn’t really the lake itself that changed a whole lot it was how this young boy grew into a man, and ended up bringing his own son to the lake just as his grandfather had brought his father before.
5. Something that conveys change and sameness is White fishing with his father. As a little boy he fished with his father and now his son as a little boy is fishing with him. It has changed in the aspect of people but stayed the same in location and similar memories.
6. The sea and the lake have differences by the kind of water. The lake is calm and serene at times while the sea is full of waves and aren’t as peaceful.
7. In the closing paragraph White sort of wraps up the time he spent with his father and the times he spends with his son, he reminisces for a final time about his childhood.
1. The central idea of White’s passage is the idea of “dual existence.” White used to visit this lake with father and now it almost seems hard to believe that he’s enacting this same tradition with his own son. It makes it hard for him to distinguish his own identity from his son’s. This idea is most notable when White describes “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 which rod I was at the end of.” The lake and the memories it holds has a strong effect on White that when fishing with his son he begins to forget he is the father now and no long the son.
ReplyDelete2. The mood and tone of the piece are very nostalgic and reminiscent. White says while watching his son he “would remember the things you could do with the old one-cylinder engine with the heavy flywheel…” While White recognizes his son in this situation, he also connects it to his own memories of completing the same task.
3. “Peace and goodness and jollity. The only thing that was wrong now, really, was the sound of the place, an unfamiliar nervous sound of the outboard motors.” This image shows the departure, over the years, from the peacefulness of the lake when he was a child to the more loudness of the lake now that he’s taken his son there.
“There had always been three tracks to choose...now the choice was narrowed down to two.” Although it seems very metaphorical, White is literally talking about a track that is now gone. It gives him an uneasy feeling as he realizes he has one less option than he previously had.
4. “...the boat was the same boat, the same color green and the ribs broken in the same places…” White describes the the physical aspects of the lake that have not changed, while above, the change in the lake is connected more to feelings.
“It was the arrival of this fly that convinced me beyond any doubt that everything was as it always had been…” The dragonfly must have had some sort of significance in his childhood for him to make the assertion that nothing about the lake had changed.
5. An image that conveys a change and sameness is when White “...began to sustain the illusion that he was I, and therefore, by simple transposition, that I was my father. This sensation persisted, kept cropping up all the time we were there.” The sameness is the idea of father and son, but the actual difference is it is now White taking his son.
6. The sea brought a feeling of restlessness while the lake brought a certain sense of peacefulness. White makes this contrast in the beginning paragraph because it later shows that, as the years have passed, the lake has become less placid, connecting and conveying the sense of change White feels.
7. In the closing paragraph, White sees an even larger sense of sameness between him and his son. The majority of the essay focuses on White and his father, but in the paragraph he really hones in on White and his son. It reinforces the idea that things have changed, but as he describes it now, White seems content with that.
Alexander and Kyra
ReplyDelete1. The central idea of White’s essay is his connection with his son, and the fact that he is growing older. Despite his nostalgia and the seemingly unchanging environment surrounding the lakes, many years have passed and will continue to pass until he is no longer alive. He believes his son to be himself, and himself his father, but is dragged back to reality when he realizes that he is aging. In the last line, White states “As he buckled the swollen belt suddenly my groin felt the chill of death,” (White) describing that though he is connected to his son, he knows that he is not him and is approaching death, as his father did.
2. The tone is introspective and reminiscent in his descriptions of his relationship to his son and how it has materialized at the lake. When he asserts, “I seemed to be living in a dual existence. I would be in the middle of some simple act... and suddenly it would be not I but my father,” (White) he remembers the experiences with his own father and how those were seeping into his life many years later. Instead of just perceiving his actions, he begins to consciously analyze them.
3. White describes the loud and whining outboard motorboats that are popular, as opposed to the inboard motors that had a low and tranquil ambiance on the lake. He seems to prefer the inboard motorboats because of this hum. Also, there are two road tracks, as opposed to three, which the author disdains, missing his three choices.
4. White describes the presence of dragonflies while he’s fishing and the image of the boat as unchanged, which cements in his mind the idea that nothing has changed and no time has passed.
5. The image of the waitresses conveys both change and sameness, as they are the same age that they were during White’s first visit, but are different girls with washed hair. He is convinced they are the same, aside from their hair. He is desperately holding on to this feeling of sameness and youth and can’t come to terms with his aging.
6. White depicts the sea as an untamable mass that acts in an erratic manner as compared to the peaceful lake that exudes serenity. This creates a stark contrast between the two bodies of water as well as his states of being at different points in his life. He makes this comparison in the first paragraph to create a basis for his central theme for while as a child he was allowed to relax and enjoy the summer hours, but as an adult, life has become more of a whirlwind, less assuring.
7. The closing paragraph becomes solemn as White comes to terms with his ultimate fate. The feels the connection to his son because he was once that young, enjoying the water and the air, but now he understands that he has a strong connection to his father as well as he grows old and “[feels] the chill of death” (White). In this fashion, it gives closure to his inner dilemma to understand what has changed and what has remained the same, for the lake is a mix of both. The ending inspires a feeling of despair within the reader, as he describes his nostalgia and happiness and then quickly contradicts it with feelings of approaching death.
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Delete1. The central idea of the passage is that the narrator feels as though his son is becoming him, and he is becoming his father. This is illustrated as White states "I began to sustain the illusion that he was I, and therefore, by simple transposition, that I was my father".
ReplyDelete2. The mood is very calm, and there is a great deal of reminiscent speech and behavior throughout the essay. White exhibits that this is true for the lake itself, stating "This seemed an utterly enchanted sea, this lake you could leave to its own devices for a few hours and come back to, and find that it had not stirred,". White also expresses the feeling of being stuck in a time warp, looking back on his own experiences, stating "It was the arrival of this fly that convinced me beyond any doubt that everything was as it always had been, that the years were a mirage and there had been no years".
3. Two images that White uses to suggest that the lake has changed are the waitresses with the clean hair, and the number of tracks he has the choice to walk in has changed.
4.Two images that White uses to suggest that the lake has not changed are the boat and the dragonflies.
5.The country girls are both the same and different because they are still the same type of 15 year old, pretty girls, but their hair is clean.
6. The contrast he makes is that while a sea is unruly and changing, a lake is calm and serene. He explains this in the opening paragraph in order to introduce his character and his connection to the lake.
7.The narrator realizes that he is not his and his son is not him and that thing have, indeed, changed. This moment of realization puts a sudden halt to all of the reminiscent thoughts and ideas that the narrator reinforced throughout the piece.
NAME????
Delete1) The feeling he invokes is the sentimentality of growing up and visiting a place he went to when he was younger, and the eery feeling of looking at your children and seeing not them, but yourself as a child. This is especially shown in paragraph three when white says “I began to sustain the illusion that he was I, and therefore, by simple transposition, that I was my father. This sensation persisted, kept cropping up all the time we were there” (White).
ReplyDelete2) The mood of the piece was peaceful and sentimental. White talks about the connection he feels with his son, but he does not do so in a frantic or worried way, but instead just observes the way his son seems to be him and he seems to be his own father. He sees the generational connection while fishing by showing how “the boat was the same boat, the same color green and the ribs broken in the same places, and under the floor boards the same freshwater leavings and debris--the dead helgramite, the wisps of moss, the rusty discarded fishhook, the dried blood from yesterday's catch” (White).
3) Two images that show how the lake has changed is the way they used to have three paths to walk on to get to dinner, and now they only have two, and how people used to arrive in wagons and all the children would rush to help unpack, and now people just simply drive up in their cars and unpack by themselves.
4) Two images that show how the lake has not changed is how their boat has stayed the same all these years and how fishing is the same scene as it was when he was a child, and how in the mornings as a child he used to sneak out of the cabin to go on the boat, and now his son does the same thing.
5) Two things that show the lake has both changed and stayed the same are the waitresses, still young girls who have just learned to wash their hair, and the motors, which have now gotten louder and faster but were still there in some form when White was a boy.
6) He makes the contrast between a sea and a lake by saying how a sea was kind of dangerous and wild and untamable, while a lake is peaceful and serene. This is important because it shows the contrast between him when he was a child and him now, because as a child he was able to relax and be as calm as a lake, but now his life is a little more wild.
7) In the closing paragraph of his essay, White realizes he is getting old and dying, and that in fact he is no longer a child, and that his son is not him. It gives closure to the essay by pulling him out of his daydream of being a child again, and makes him feel complete about what is the same and what has changed.
NAME?????
Delete1. The central idea of White’s passage is that even though he changes the world hardly would. It is an internal conflict of man vs. himself. He has to accept his own mortality. As well as him watching his son become him as he becomes his father and becomes closer to death.
ReplyDelete2. The mood of the essay is peaceful and nostalgic. “It seemed to me, as I kept remembering all this, that those times and those summers had been infinitely precious and worth saving.”
3. “The only thing that was wrong now, really, was the sound of the place. 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. In those other summertimes, all motors were inboard; and when they were at a little distance, the noise they made was a sedative, an ingredient of summer sleep.” The one thing that changed about the lake was the sound itself, which seemed to unsettle him and make him nervous.
4. “...the boat was the same boat, the same color green and the ribs broken in the same places…” White describes the physical aspects of the lake that have not changed, while above, the change in the lake is connected more to feeling which have not changed either.
5. The country girls are both the same and different because they are the same type of 15-year-old pretty girls but their hair is clean.
6.
7. In the closing paragraph of his essay, white realizes he is getting old and dying and faces the facts that he is no longer is not young anymore.
NAME???????
DeleteGreat job
ReplyDelete