Discovering Mortality in Once Again at the LakeE. B. White's story "Once More to the Lake" is about a man who revisits a lake from his childhood to find that his life has lost its placidity. The man remembers his childhood as he remembers the lake; peaceful and still. Spending time at the lake as an adult made the man realize that his life had become unsettling and restless, like the tides of the ocean. Having brought his son with him to this place in the past, the man draws inevitable comparisons between his son and his childhood self, and between himself as an adult and the way he remembers his father from the perspective of his childhood. The man's experience at the lake with his son is the moment he discovers his own mortality. The man had lived to adulthood and therefore would never have been able to experience the lake as he did when he was a child. Aside from the noise of the outboard motors, the lake was much the same as before. “The only thing wrong now, really, was the noise of the place, a nervous, unfamiliar sound from the outboard motors” (White 153). This "nervous" sound suggests the nervousness of adulthood; the anxieties that run through the minds of people who have matured. The noise created by outboard motors reflects the noise in man's consciousness. Instead of the "sleepy" sound of the inboard engines used when the man was a child, there were now noisy engines, cluttering the air around the lake. These sounds constantly reminded the man of the restlessness of his adult life. Due to constant obstacles such as the noise of outboard motors or the internal struggles that come with adulthood, man could only return to the lake as a guest of his own memories...... middle of paper..... . izes his mortality in the same way. Some people realize their mortality when they are young, while others realize it an instant before they die. I'm not sure if I will ever experience this feeling like the man in this story did. However, knowing that one day I will have to face the inevitable makes me want to create a belief about what will happen after I reach my destiny. I feel like I can relate to the way that man felt because I have yet to find answers for what, if anything, will be found beyond my mortality. The eerie feeling I get when I think about it seriously is probably comparable to the feeling man felt when he realized his own mortality. Some people calm this feeling by putting their faith in God. Unfortunately, I can't escape the suspicion that God is the invention of an animal that knows it's going to die, and that sends shivers down my spine..