Once more to the lake thesis4/15/2023 ![]() The burdens of the adult world are diminished in the comfort and solitude of the lake, and for me this struck a chord. ![]() The world of his adulthood is represented by “the fearful cold of the sea,” and he yearns for what he had, “the placidity of the lake in the woods” (White 179). White returns to a place where in his mind he is eternally a boy. It validates my need to write, for my words to resonate in the souls of those who read them. When reading something as beautifully written as this, it conjures up a familiar emotion I have experienced at a deep connection with a work of art. White feels “the chill of death” (185), at the dawning comprehension of a shift in the chain, the irrefutable knowledge of his own mortality. As he watches the crowds of young people swimming in the rain, the “children screaming in delight at the new sensation…linking the generations in a strong indestructible chain” (White 184), his son steps into the water and is baptized, becoming a new link in the chain. He has the persistent sensation that his son is him, and he is his father (White 180), adding to the illusion, is the constancy of the “pattern of life indelible, the fadeproof lake, the woods, the sweetfern and the juniper forever and ever, summer without end” (White 182). White’s thesis involves the continuity of life, the ebb of one, flowing into another. White’s unpretentious style allows his writing to be widely accessible while also giving it a seamless quality. In the human-like qualities he breathes into objects such as the outboard motor, an inseparable part of the lake, it is given a voice that is audibly “petulant” and “irritable.” (183). The morning stillness of the lake becomes a “cathedral” (White 180). White captures the idyllic setting of a favorite childhood escape. With his use of startlingly refreshing metaphors, E.B.
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