“Once More to the Lake” by E.B. White is a nostalgic story in which White revisited his “old haunts” with his son. The trip began with White’s wish for getting placidity, but ended up with his feeling of “the chill of death”. It was a trip for White to figure out who he was, and it was also a trip for White to realize that he could never live in the past.

As to White, the lake he revisited was a significant place in his life. It was a place where White went every year during his childhood, and a place full of White’s childhood happiness. It was an ideal place for White to live in the past, and to feel no passage of time. And it was also a place where White found out himself and felt the “chill of death”.

In order to live in the past, White kept remembering everything in the past when he got back to the lack. He found that the lake in font of him was almost identical to the lake when he was young. The same tar “led to within half a mile of the shore”; the same dragonfly “alighted on the tip of his rod”; the same “cultist” was there “with a cake of soap”. “Everything was as it always had been” and there seemed to be “no passage of time”.

White saw the sameness of the lake, and he found some comfort in the sameness and predictability of the lake: “the years were a mirage”; the lake was an “utterly enchanted sea which you could leave to its own devices for a few hours and come back”; “there had been jollity and peace and goodness”; “we had a good week at the camp”… The sameness of the lake made White fell like living in the past when he was young.

However, but for all that was the same and constant, things were still changing. The once gravel roads had been paved over. White’s father was no longer rolling in canoe. The alternative of the third track did not exist any more. The sail boats were replaced by motor boats. The hair of the country girls had been washed. And the “arriving was less exciting nowadays” because there was no more wonderful fuss about the trunks. And White could not adapt to those changes. He was disappointed with the noisy outboard motors, and he “missed terribly the middle alternative track”.

All these sameness and changes led to a dizzy and unsettling White, and he could not figure out his identity. So during the whole trip, White was struggling to find out who was he, whether he was his father in the past because “he would be picking up a bait box or laying down a table fork” as his father had done in the past, whether he was his son at that moment because “he did not know which rod he was at the end of”, and whether he was himself because “he was the one walking in his pants”.

White had had trouble making out who was he until the end. A thunderstorm came up in the afternoon while they were at that lake. Seeing his son swimming, he suddenly felt “the chill of death” and the sensation of death’s approach. At that time, White stopped his struggling, and he finally found out who he really was. He was neither his father in the past, nor his son swimming in the lake. He was no longer living in the past. Time was passing, and he could not stay in the past forever.

It was this feeling of “chill of death” made White realize the death’s approach. He found out that he was in pulling on the role of his father’s, the role that led to death. And his son would take over his role to death one day. It is the life cycle of human beings—the cycle of birth, childhood, maturity and death. We may look back to the past, and we may try to go back to the past. But no matter how hard we try, we could never live in the past. In fact, we are all subject to the life cycle of human beings. White was finally aware of that, and he hoped we all would remember that forever.

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