Once More on the Lake Questions

1) White's attitude seems reminiscent in a way within his opening paragraphs. He was speaking about his past memories and making it sound like a story he's telling to other children, like a bedtime story.

2) White's selection of details provided imagery for the reader. For example he said, "I wondered how time would have marred this unique, this holy spot–the coves and streams, the hills that the sun set behind." In saying this, he provided the reader with the image of what the lake looked like when he was young along with the image of the lake possibly changing completely.

3) A. "There were cottages sprinkled around the shores" – personification. It provided imagery for the reader so they could visualize the scenery better. 

    B. White also tends to list when describing thing and/or actions that were made. For example, he said, "We caught two bass, hauling them in briskly as though they were mackerel, pulling them over the side of the boat in a businesslike manner without any landing net, and stunning them with a blow on the back of the head."

    C. There's also the asyndeton he used to create this poetic effect such as "Summertime, oh, summertime, pattern of life indelible, the fade-proof lake, the woods unshatterable, the pasture with the sweetfern and the juniper forever and ever, summer without end;"

4) He applies to all of our senses, even touch. He mentioned in the fifth paragraph, "I felt the damp moss covering the worms in the bait can," appealing to our sense of touch, adding to the effect of imagery.

5) He was comparing and contrasting the motors back in the time when he was a child to the time now that he was an adult. He used similes, metaphors, and personification to help him describe to the readers what the motors sounded like.

6) White was reminiscing in his memories again, and the readers get a piece of why the lake was such an important part of his childhood.

7) The sentence seemed unfinished, as if he was purposely leaving us in suspense, leaving space there for the readers to fill(interpretation),  kind of like we're doing now.

8) It was another piece of imagery White used that mostly parents and adults would relate with. He was describing his realization of how old he was getting after watching his son doing things that he used to do when he was a child.

9) Mr. Giddings, I'm not counting the "and"s in this story. That involves numbers and numbers mean math, so no.

With the amount of "and"s he used in this passage gave all of his details a sense of connectedness. "And"s group things up together. Like in lists, they would be used to list a bunch of things that are somehow connected in some way. The "and"s in his story has the same purpose, so that all of the many details he had about the lake could be interconnected.