In the descriptive essay Once More to the Lake, E. B. White incorporates vivid imagery dealing with all five of the senses and various rhetorical devices, such as repetition and personification, to portray his dominant impression. The speaker of this descriptive essay is White. He is a father, who is reminiscing about a lake in Maine. This lake is special to him because in 1904, White’s father takes him to this lake. He now is revisiting the lake with his son, and he is reliving the experience as he watches his son copy the things from the visit in 1904. White writes, “I had trouble making out which was I, the one walking at my side, the one walking in my pants” (5). The more time he spends with his son at the lake, the more familiar and similar it becomes to the last visit. He realizes how so much is still the same. White intends his audience to be fathers, who want to make an impact on the sons’ lives by showing them the experiences from the fathers’ childhood. Another audience White intends for his essay are people who think everything is changing and need a thing in life that remains the same and…show more content… White does this when he delineates the dragonfly on his pole. Instead of simply saying that the dragonfly is on his pole and then leaves, he describes in great detail the situation. White composes, “the dragonfly alight on the tip of my rod as it hovered a few inches from the surface of the water...I lowered the tip of mine into the water, tentatively, pensively dislodging the fly, which darted two feet away” (2-3). White does this again with the storm. He can just write that a storm happens, but he takes it further and shows his audience the storm. White illustrates the thunder in the storm as “the kettle drum, then the snare, then the bass drums and cymbals, then crackling light against the dark” (6). White’s descriptions help show the reader what happens and how it
