An American Childhood In Annie Dillard's Once More To The Lake

Childhood, like any other part of a person’s life, is only lived once. Once childhood becomes our past, as we all know, becomes a memory. To help the reader become more aware of how heartbreaking this fact may be. The authors E.B white in “Once More to The Lake” with the fact that you can never revisit the past, and Annie Dillard, in “An American Childhood,” through looking back at the past while remembering to be happy in the present. For E.B White in “Once More to The Lake” the lake he visits serves as a symbol of the past and present. He will always have the memories of spending time at the lake with his father, as he himself brings his son to the same lake one summer, he suddenly realizes that roles have changed. His son is now him and he is now his father. Suddenly the realization of mortality comes to mind. “I have since become a salt water man, bur sometimes in summer there are days when the relentless of the tides and the fearful cold of the sea water and the incessant wind that blows across the afternoon and into the evening make me wish for the placidity

The way she lived as a child, makes an outline of how she lives life as an adult. Anne was a very curious child, like most children. Unlike most children Anne beams curiosity. Everything in the world is fascinating to her. As she grows older and becomes more aware of the world and how harsh it can be, she realizes others also become more aware. They lose the strike of curiosity, that Anne never quite seems to lose. In the story as Anne grows older, she comes to a shock as she realizes her curiosity is deluded. Suddenly she is concerned with things everyone else her age is concerned with. In the end, Anne ends up settling with herself. She needed a compromise between her past self, and her current self. Anne decides to to admire the world with all of its beauty, and everything it has to