“the Brown Wasps” and “once More to the Lake”- When the Past Distorts the Present

Sang Min Park

124218173

BTC 140 SDD

“The Brown Wasps” and “Once More to the Lake”: When the Past Distorts the Present

Central to Eiseley’s “The Brown Wasps” and White’s “Once More to the Lake” are two approaches towards time, place, and memory. In both works, the protagonist struggles to accept reality and embrace the changing world. Thus, by evoking memories of the past, the world in which each story unfolds loses its appeal to the lead character demonstrating an unhealthy need to rewind time. The combination of the three factors are twisted against each other allowing the narrators to weave between the past and the present. Similarly, in both narrations memory and place serve as the channels through which a duality of time exists yet arrive at different conclusions.

In Eiseley’s writing, the man explores every living being’s inherent need to find consistency in an ever-changing world. From animals to humans, we innocently create a dependency on the memories that function as anchors amid the passing years. Consider the “flocks of pigeons” that created a connection between their sustenance and the “nut-vending machines and scattered food scraps” that made up a railway station (Eiseley par.15). When the city was building a subway, the commuters that had been unknowingly feeding the pigeons abandon the station to the improved means of transport. The birds, in contrast, remained by the train station that has become synonymous with prime memories, food. Later, when workers go to demolish the train station, the pigeons hopelessly return, drawn back by their memories, disregarding that time and place has changed. As long as there exist the reminder of a train station, time might as well stand still.

A similar perception of memory and location is evident in White’s short narrative. Albeit from the standpoint of a father/son relationship, the protagonist struggles to realize whether he is a father with a son or vice versa. For example, while fishing with his son, the man informs us, “it was [his] hands that held [the son’s] rod” and that he “felt dizzy and [did not] know which rod [he] was at the end of” (White par.4). The dual existence, where the man sees himself in the child, conjures an emotional response causing confusion over the place and the period in which they exist. Similar to Eiseley’s pigeons, White is incapable of acknowledging the passage of time as his presence at the lake brings about some vivid flashbacks in which he is the child that is fishing with his father. The lake functions as a foundation for his memories where he spends his time creating a father/son bond.