Once More to the Lake - Summary and Analysis

Description: "Once More to the Lake"

To descript is to portray or re-create a scene, a person, a place or a feeling. Description is an important skill in communication between people, and it appears in most of the writing situation. An "effective description requires a dominant impression—a central theme or idea about the subject to which readers can relate all the details" (Aaron 22). Elwyn Brooks White uses description effectively in "Once More to the Lake" to portray the scene of revisiting his faultless youthful vacation spot and relate it to his struggling, for the lake reminds him that he is an adult.

White describes the lake with subjective description, which gives out his impression and emotion of the lake filtered through his experiences of it. The essay shows White having an internal struggle between acting and viewing the lake like he did as a kid and viewing it as his father would have. By looking at his son, he feels like looking at himself as a child and reminds him that he is not a child anymore. White states, "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 which rod I was at the end of" (28). The feeling of getting older developed a conflict inside White.

By describing the view of the lake and the act of White and his son, White shows his realization of the life cycle and the transcendence of time, even to the most remote and isolated areas, they will have the chance of losing their primitive disposition. White represents a good model of description, as his description brings out a dominant impression to support his thesis.

Works Cited

Aaron, Jane E., ed. 40 Model Essays. New York: Bedford/St. Matins, 2005.

White, Elwyn Brooks.