Once More to the Lake by E. B. White
E.B. White used different length sentences in his story Once More to the Lake. Usually the short sentences were the first sentence in a paragraph. That sentence introduced an idea. Then he would add detail with longer sentences by describing the water, or the boats, or the lake itself. The short sentence seemed to catch my attention more just because it was a statement of fact. When I was reading the descriptions I thought more about places I had been and things I have seen trying to picture the lake in my own mind. But the short sentences did not make me think about anything but the one fact.
I particularly enjoyed how the father related to both his father and his son in this story. Sometimes he felt like his father, sometimes he saw the world through his son’s eyes. My favorite sentence was not about that, it was about the thunderstorm. I liked the whole paragraph, and I noticed that it was one of the ones introduced and closed by a short sentence. Near the end there is a long sentence about people playing in the rain. “Afterward the calm, the rain steadily rustling in the calm lake, the return of light and hope, and the bright cries perpetuating the deathless joke about how they were getting simply drenched and the children screaming with delight at the new sensation of bathing in the rain, and the joke about getting drenched linking the generations in a strong indestructible chain.” . I like that one because it tied everything together, the way the writer related to his father and his son, and the way the whole place seemed to be repeating itself over and over, and because I would like to go there and join in.
Works Cited
White, E. B. "Once More to the Lake." 1941. Freewebs. 15 05 2013
