Once More to the Lake

Although the scope of White’s narrative is rather narrow as he recounts a summer vacation with his son, he employs the trip as a framing narrative that supports a complex commentary regarding the passage of time. Throughout the essay, White attempts to balance the sensation of timelessness he experiences upon returning to his childhood vacation spot. His own passage to adulthood took place alongside the sweeping technological and cultural changes across America during the first half of the 20th century. To this end, White goes to great lengths to assure himself that the lake is “pretty much the same as it had been before” (2) even as he catalogues the changes that have occurred since his last visit, which took place when he was a child. These changes include the paved road leading up to camp, the outboard motorboats on the lake, and the general store situated close to camp, which now has “more Coca Cola and not so much Moxie and root beer” (5) as it used to.

White insists that the lake is the same even as he freely notes the ways in which it is not, and this overarching inconsistency sets up a broader tension regarding the passage of time. On the one hand, things are obviously different; technology has progressed, culture has changed, and White has grown up. On the other, life at camp has remained largely the same in terms of its daily routines and pleasures, like fishing on the lake and dining at the big farmhouse. In creating this tension, White identifies two modes of time’s passage: a linear model in which time moves in a straight line and a cyclical understanding of time that highlights life’s recurrent patterns. As time passes and the world changes, the lake somehow manages to remain the same: “This seemed an utterly enchanted sea, this lake you could leave to its own devices for a few hours and come back to, and find that it had not stirred, this constant and trustworthy body of water” (2). In contrast to the rest of the world, which bears witness to changes including the construction of tarred roads and the disappearance of Moxie soda, the lake, for White, remains almost magically still and unchanged. This staid quality is what attracts White to the lake, in contrast to the “restlessness of the tides and the fearful cold” (1) of the ocean.

Most strangely, White illustrates this underlying sameness through his repeated impression that he has assumed the role of his father, while his son has assumed the role of his younger self. White is not reassured by the transposition of himself and his son; he underscores the alienating aspects of this impression: “Everywhere we went I had trouble making out which was I, the on walking at my side, the one walking in my pants” (5). Elsewhere, he describes this sensation as “creepy” (2). The lake facilitates a defamiliarizing process in which White and his son no longer exists as individuals; instead, they enact an archetypical father and son relationship that exists outside of linear time.

This tension comes to an abrupt end at the end of the essay when, after a storm, White observes his son getting dressed to swim in the lake: “As he buckled the swollen belt suddenly my groin felt the chill of death” (5). Here, linear time is abruptly reestablished. White suddenly sees his son not as the embodiment of his younger self, which would suggest a kind of immortality, but as a reminder of his own mortality. Together, they are part of a cycle of biological reproduction that represents timelessness. At the same time, that pattern is built upon their own mortality. The lake reminds White that, while he is part of a timeless pattern, he is himself subject to the passing of time and, ultimately, death.