once more to the lake (1941) thesis

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Analysis of E. B. White’s “Once More to the Lake”

E.B. White’s essay, Once More to the Lake , which was first published in 1941, describes his experience as he revisits a childhood lake in Maine. This revisiting is a journey in which White delights in memories associated with his childhood and the lake. In effect, his mindset transforms and goes back to his childhood. This transformation is necessary for him to find enjoyment in the journey. However, the transformation also emphasizes an altered perception of the actual lake. For instance, instead of viewing the lake as it is, he uses his childhood eyes to perceive the lake. This condition creates an interesting departure from reality into what he wants to see based on his childhood experiences. Once More to the Lake is a depiction of E. B. White’s experience as he visits a lake once again – the lake that he has been fond of since childhood.

E. B. White’s experience brings him to the lakefront, where he finds himself staring at the same lake, which is virtually unchanged. This means that White focuses on the unchanging things despite the surrounding changes and the changes that he experiences in his life. White wants to emphasize the permanence of some things, or at least the permanence of the memory of those things, despite the never-ending change that happens in the world.

Even though the lake itself has not changed, E. B. White’s essay indicates that there are some changes in things that are separate from the lake. For example, when White arrives at the lakefront, he wishes to enjoy the scene and the experience of being at the lake once again, but he becomes bothered by the noise of the new boats that are on the lake. The new boats have noisier engines.

E. B. White wants to show that technology can be disruptive. Technology can, indeed, make things become faster and more efficient, but it can also make things noisier, more disruptive, or undesirable. Thus, White emphasizes the negative side of new technologies. Nonetheless, as White continues his story, it is indicated that he has a liking for old engines. This liking started from his childhood. Even though he first views technology as something disruptive, the essay also touches on personal perception and preference. For instance, White does not like the new engines and the noise they make. However, this dislike could be due to his desire and expectation to see boats with the old engines that he saw in his childhood.

Some things may not change. All things change based on the underlying principle that nothing is constant in this world and that every little thing changes. However, there are some things that may not change, such as the thought of a person, the feelings that one has toward other people, and the longing for something. E.B. White shows that the lake is unchanged, but this may be only in his own perception. It is possible that the lake has already changed when he arrives as an adult at the lakefront, but his perception of the lake does not change. This perception and the associated emotions do not change, as he still likes what he sees and feels.

His experience of being at the lakefront brings him back to his childhood years when he was a boy experiencing the lake. Considering that White shows that his perception switches between that of an adult and that of a boy, it is arguable that his actual experience of the lake as an adult is marred by such switching between perceptions. It is possible that the actual lake that he revisits is already different, but his perception, as a boy, does not change, thereby making the lake only virtually unchanged. Also, the technology that he refers to, in the form of new and noisier engines, may have also been affected by such switching in his perceptions. It is possible that the new and noisier boats are not really that disruptive. It is just that he is used to the old and less noisy ones, thereby making his claims about the new boats personally subjective and not necessarily real.

E.B. White’s lake is a symbol of the role of physical spaces in personal development. For example, the essay shows that the lake serves as a setting for familial interactions, especially in the author’s past. Also, the lake serves as a venue for reflection. When White goes back to the lake, it facilitates his reflection of change and development. The lake helps him think back and develop a better understanding of his situation.

E.B. White’s essay, Once More to the Lake , supports the idea of the necessity of permanence in life. Even though the lake has changed over the years, it remains a lake that the author can visit. His current visit to the lake also represents his desire to be there. The lake stands as a reminder of his childhood experiences. In this regard, the lake sheds light on the benefit of having some form or degree of permanence in life. This permanence can help anchor the person and his psychological development.

• White, E. B. (1941). Once More to the Lake .
• White, E. B. (2016). Essays of E. B. White . Perennial.
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Once More to the Lake

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First published in Harper’s magazine in 1941, “Once More to the Lake” narrates White’s visit to Belgrade Lakes, Maine, where he had vacationed as a child.

Golden Pond in Belgrade Lakes. Image via Maine Travel Maven.

For a fresh look at White’s timeless children’s novel, Charlotte’s Web , read the Lit Genius original, “Hidden Threads: Revisiting "Charlotte’s Web”.

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E. B. White’s Song of Summer

Timeless and poignant, "once more to the lake" still speaks to the passing of life's seasons..

Labor Day, the unofficial close of summer, is a good time to remember E. B. White, whose elegant good-bye to the season still draws readers 75 years after its publication.

White memorialized summer in “Once More to the Lake,” a 1941 meditation on the passage of time that has become among the most widely anthologized essays in the English language. Elwyn Brooks White (1899–1985)—Andy to his friends—is best known as the author of  Charlotte’s Web  and  Stuart Little , children’s books inspired by his later years on a saltwater farm in Maine. White had lived in Manhattan, thriving as a writer for the  New Yorker , but he had a midlife crisis of sorts shortly before World War II. Seeking a change in how he lived and wrote, he moved to Maine with his wife, Katharine, the  New Yorker ’s fiction editor, a transition chronicled in a 2014  Humanities article . The children’s books that grew from that experience are justly celebrated. But White also published sublimely expressed essays about his life as a father, farmer, and husband, of which “Once More to the Lake” is perhaps the most famous.

The premise is simple, or at least appears to be. “One summer, along about 1904,” he tells readers, “my father rented a camp on a lake in Maine and took us all there for the month of August . . . the vacation was a success, and from then on none of us ever thought there was any place in the world like that lake in Maine. We returned summer after summer—always on August 1st for one month.”  

In the summer of 1941, as he turned 42, White returned to the same lake with his son, wondering if the magic could be repeated. He finds that despite the decades, much remains the same. But in recounting his experiences, White strikes a tone of elegy, as if his lake adventure is already receding into memory. His piece, which was published by  Harper’s  in August 1941, just as the season was drawing to a close, describes his Maine world:

Summertime, oh summertime, pattern of life indelible, the fade-proof lake, the woods unshatterable, the pasture with the sweetfern and the juniper forever and ever, summer without end; this was the background, and life along the shore was the design, the cottages with their infinite and tranquil design, their tiny docks with the flagpole and the American flag floating against the white clouds in the blue sky . . . and at the souvenir counters at the store the miniature birch-bark canoes and the post cards showing things looking a little better than they looked.

The last line of the passage is vintage White. He begins on a breath of nostalgia, but then he resists the urge to see things as we wish them to be, insisting that they instead be seen as they are.

That tension rests at the heart of White’s reflection on his return to the lake with his son. For much of the essay, living vicariously through his son, he tricks himself into thinking that he  is  his son, a grown man restored to boyhood. Without quite saying so—White had a genius for showing rather than telling—he hints that this confusion of identity is a symptom of our middle years, that period of life in which we often feel mentally as if we’re one age, although chronologically we’re another.

But in the final paragraph, as his son slips on some wet swim trunks, a flash of recognition returns White to reality. “As he buckled the swollen belt,” White tells readers, “suddenly my groin felt the chill of death.”

Although White usefully avoided adorning his essays with teachable moments, at least one lesson of “Once More to the Lake” is obvious. Our supply of summers is not infinite, which is why each one is worth savoring.

In 1951, when an apparently young reader named Marilyn Boyer wrote White to ask him what “Once More to the Lake” was about, White mentioned its autumnal theme of mortality.

“At your age this is perhaps hard to understand,” he told her. “It will become clearer to you later on. Meantime, be thankful that a wet bathing suit is just a wet bathing suit.”

Sources:  One Man’s Meat  by E. B. White,  Letters of E. B. White , revised edition.

Danny Heitman is the editor of Phi Kappa Phi’s Forum magazine and a columnist for the  Advocate newspaper in Louisiana. He writes frequently about arts and culture for national publications, including the Wall Street Journal and the  Christian Science Monitor.

Funding information

NEH has supported numerous projects relating to children’s literature and writers connected to the  New Yorker , including James Thurber, E. B. White, and A. J. Liebling. Some of White’s essays have been collected in thematic volumes published by  Library of America , which was started with the help of a major grant from NEH. White also appears, along with many other writers, in the correspondence files of Morris Leopold Ernst, a lawyer who cofounded the ACLU and whose papers are being curated with NEH support at the  Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin .

Summer 2016

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Once More to the Lake

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Linear and Cyclical Concepts of Time

“Once More to the Lake” reflects White’s efforts to make sense of the passage of time in his own life. Using his nostalgic return to the lake as a framing device, White outlines two competing models of time. Most prominently, he invokes a notion of time based on the cyclical, repetitive nature of certain events. This concept of time is linked to natural phenomena, such as the lake itself and the archetypal relationship between father and son. White contrasts the cyclical nature of time with a linear description of time. He also highlights changes brought by time, including industrial development and his own process of aging.

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What Is the Thesis of “Once More to the Lake” by E.B. White?

“Once More to the Lake” is an essay by E.B. White describing his emotions when he returns to a childhood summer place. He had first visited the Maine camp with his own father in 1904, and he revisits in 1941 with his son. He compares the lake of his memory with the largely unchanged contemporary scene and simultaneously experiences the place through his son’s eyes and his own.

White’s essay follows the trail of memory as he and his son drive to the cabin and unload their gear, rent a motorized boat for bass fishing and dine at a local restaurant. White begins to feel as though he is the son listening to his father’s words coming out of his own mouth. He imagines that time has stood still and that a dragonfly, the bather with a bar of soap and teenagers in a steamship cruise boat are the same ones he had noticed as a child.

The essay is an exercise in duality. Is White the son or the father? Has time passed or is it frozen? It ends with White feeling the “chill of death” as he watches his son pull a soggy, cold bathing suit up around “his vitals,” a reference to his own mortality.

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