Once More to the Lake

The article “Once More to the Lake” is a personal story told by E.B. White about his childhood experiences at the lake where his father took him for an entire month in the summer. In the beginning of the story White is a grown man with a son and he hasn’t visited the lake in many years. After remembering all the fun and great experiences he had at the lake he decides to bring his son up to the lake in hopes that he will too enjoy the lake and make memories that will last a life time. Once they arrive at the lake White begins to remember more and more about his personal experiences at the lake when he was a child and sees himself in his son. White also relates himself to his father in how he treats his son and how he teaches him lessons at the lake. In the article White expresses the relevance of time and aging at the lake. How time just seems to stop at the lake and nothing ever ages and how beautiful that is. White uses the rhetorical devices diction, pathos, syntax and imagery which really helps the readers relate to Whites experiences on the lake.

One of the rhetorical devices is diction, which also relates to the word choice. White did a great job in using more intelligent vocabulary to add greater meaning and emotion to a sentence. White portrays a lot of emotion in his writing, but the ones that I felt the most had to be happiness, fulfillment, and over welling joy. “summer, oh, summer, pattern of life indelible, the fade-proof lake, the woods unshatterable, the pasture with the sweet fern and the juniper forever and ever, summer without end;” said White. In this quote White uses such words as indelible and fade-proof to describe how the lake never seems to change and how much power the lake holds. He also uses words like unshatterable to describe the woods and talks about the sweet ferns and junipers that last forever and ever this paints a picture in your mind about how vast and massive the beauty of the lake scenery is. He also talks about the lake being a summer without end; this in my mind is just talking about the endless beauty that the lake holds and all its great memories. By White using those words you don’t hear in your everyday vocabulary it adds emphasis on what he is trying to get across.

Another rhetorical device used by White in this article is pathos, which relates to the emotions that he is trying to get across. After reading this