It's time for E.B. White

Both of the essays we read for today by White tackle the issue of time. How it seems to pass, how it actually passes, and what that means to us individuals, and as members of our greater communities.

In Once More to the Lake the author begins the piece as a memory. That is, it is written as a remembrance of times that have passed. However, we come to find there is actually something static about this Lake. As the world changes, and the people who visit the lake change, the lake itself somehow stays the same. The lake is used to define "The American Family at Play," (535) which is a concept that remains throughout time. White does note small differences such as hairstyles of the "same" people who are there year after year. He calls it a summer without end.

White goes on with this idea of time by saying that while this scene and the stereotypical members that are there remains the same he has somehow changed characters. Moreover, in the past he went with his father. This trip to the lake still involves father and son but he is somehow now the father, but remembers being the son. He writes, "I began to sustain the illusion that he was I, and therefore, by simple transposition, that I was my father"(534).

In The Ring of Time, White talks about time as a circle. However, he says that if time were a circle, which it isn't, we would get nowhere. He writes, "The beginning was where the end was, and the two were the same, and one thing ran into the next and time went round and around and got nowhere," (541). This is describing the circus act going in circles but describes time.

The journey of life consists of three times: morning, afternoon and night. White says that you are not the same person in the morning as you are at night. Many people, such as the circus performer according to White, do not quite understand this.

White then applies this concept to civil rights saying change is the only thing that should always remain the same. He writes, "The only sense that is common, in the long run, is the sense of change-- and we all instinctively avoid it, and object to the passage of time, and would rather have none of it" (544).

Overall, these essays discuss the idea that our world may not seem to change, but even if it does not we as individuals and society do. Not only is this a fact, but it is a necessity. 

Dealing with laws from past society, such as civil rights in this case, can be a problem. It is important to change with times.