Once More to the Lake
E.B. White

Quality of Voice? The voice talks on the lazy feel of fishing but with a darker undertone, a sense of foreboding urgency. “As he buckled the swollen belt suddenly my groin felt the chill of death.” The sentence preceding that one uses words such as “vitals” and wince” strong intense words.

What are some of the specific words or phrases that bring this essay into focus for you?  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.” The greater theme of the essay comes through here as the author grapples with how fleeting he is how nature continues and people continue even though he won’t. Time is seemingly endless for nature as he assumes it should for himself though it is no longer him as a child that walks beside him but a new child.

Where does this writer create images and or scenes? “In the shallows, the dark, water-soaked sticks and twigs smooth and old, were undulating in clusters on the bottom against the clean ribbed sand, and the track of the mussel was plain.” The nature centric piece allows White ample opportunity to paint slow specific imagery.

Where does this writer “tell?” “Everywhere we went I had trouble making out which was I, the one walking at my side, the one walking in my pants.”

What kinds of sentence variety, phrasing, etc. add to the quality of this piece? There are many long descriptive sentences that make the piece seem to stretch out. “We all got ringworm from some kittens and had to rub Pond’s extract on our arms and legs night and morning, and my father rolled over in a canoe with all his clothes on; but outside…”

Questions:

Was the detail created by returning to the location or by sheer memory?

There are several instances that you incorporate statements in parenthesis, how and why did you choose to place those comments in parentheses, when the whole essay was your commentary?