Traditional Essay: “once More to the Lake”

Sample Traditional Essay: “Once More to the Lake”

        “O death, where is thy sting?” asks Saint Paul in the fifteenth chapter of the first book of Corinthians. E. B. White in his essay, “Once More to the Lake”, answers this question. While the last sentence of the essay surprises readers as it juxtaposes the pastoral scene of campers swimming with White’s claim that his “groin felt the chill of death” (59), the stark fact of death has been foreshadowed throughout the essay and the ending is, in fact, an inevitability. While there are numerous examples of this foreshadowing, I will focus on the imagery of the fish, the imagery of the landscape, and White’s insistence on the illusion of doubling himself in the place of his son. This exploration will prove that death hovers throughout White’s deceptively lively essay.

        The fish are warning the reader of death. White is sneaking these slippery images of death into the reader’s consciousness. The fish are first introduced not as themselves but as weapons and blood. White assures the reader that everything is the same as the past, including “the rusty discarded fishhook, the dried blood from yesterday’s catch” (56). The hook is for killing the fish, and the blood belongs to the fish; they are their own remains. White then describes how he and his son kill the fish with “a blow on the back of the head” (56). The bonding activity between father and son is based on the deaths of the fish and the fish are literally dying by White and his son’s hands. While a surface reading makes it seem that White is simply describing fishing with his son, attention to the details that White emphasizes shows that these are details related to visceral death. White is, in fact, talking about death throughout his essay and his final line is no surprise.