White says, while fishing with his son “I looked at the boy who was silently watching his fly, and it was my hands that held his rod, my eyes watching. It provides the pretext of why he wishes for memories of his past. These words and their negative connotations are crucial to the nature of the illusion the speaker is describing.
In paragraph one, White describes the things that remind him of past memories with the words, “Restlessness of the tides and the fearful cold of the sea water and the incessant wind.” These words all have negative connotations, and let the reader know that the speaker’s present experiences make him wish to go back “to revisit old haunts.” In his return to the lake, many years after his childhood, White confronts multiple changes as he struggles with the illusion that the peaceful world of his childhood, and his present existence within it, remain the same. At first, while his illusion from the similar shape of the outdoors gives the false perception that time has not past, his pinpointing of the different identities of the son and father serves as testimony that the cycle from birth to death is universal.Ģ.In “Once More to the Lake,” White utilizes connotative words and phrases to establish the illusion that is the connection between childhood and adulthood. This, along with his allusion between past and present, allow White to develop his universal truth within his text. He realizes that the life course that leads to death starts with birth, and that his son’s maturity also means that the end of White is approaching. ” After a thunderstorm passes, White describes his son as he is entering the water “As he buckled the swollen belt suddenly my groin felt the chill of death.” The “chill of death” is a metaphor for the truth White finds himself a part of, even though he is experiencing both his past and present.