In this essay, White explores the passage of time and his attempt to sustain the illusion that things do not change. But he finally accepts the great irony of human existence: It is precisely because the fundamental cycle of birth, childhood, adulthood, and death are unchanging, that he, as a mortal, is subject to this cycle that will lead to in his own passing.

White uses language rich in concrete and specific detail to illustrate how things can seem to be unchanging.

This shows in his description of the cabin at the lake.

He says that he “remembered how the bedroom smelled of the lumber it was made of and the wet woods whose scent entered through the screen” (74). When he returned years later with his son, they “would be tired at night and lie down in the accumulated heat of the little bedrooms after the long hot day and the breeze would stir almost imperceptibly outside and the smell of the swamp drifted in through the rusty screens” (77). The concrete language emphasizes the sense of smell and the sense of touch as well as the sense of hearing. White suggests that the cabins, and the feeling of being in them, remain the same.

The picture of the lake in his memory was “fade-proof” and was composed of many concrete and specific details.

He remembers the cottages with “their tiny docks with the flagpole and the American flag floating against the white clouds in the blue sky, and little paths over the roots of the trees leading from camp to camp and the paths leading back to the outhouses and the can of lime for sprinkling, and the souvenir counters at the store the miniature birch-bark canoes and the postcards that showed things looking a little better than they looked” (76). In these lines, White gives an almost Whitman-like catalog of concrete details that convey the ambience of this rural retreat.

In addition to listing details, White also uses the technique of giving a general term and then following it with more specific examples.

For instance, he says that at the farmhouse where they ate, “There was a choice of pie for dessert, and one was blueberry and one was apple . . . .” (76). Again he says, “I would be in the middle of some simple act, I would be picking up a bait box or laying down a table fork . . . “ when he would suddenly have the sensation that he was his father, the actions being so familiar. So White does not just say that there was pie for desert and leave it at that; he names the kinds of pies. Likewise, he illustrates what he means by the general term “simple act” by giving examples.

To conclude the essay, White gives the concrete detail which leads to his realization that things are not the same, and that because time passes, he will grow old and die.

After a rainstorm, his young son takes a cold, wet swimsuit from the line, and as he pulls it on, White sees him “wince slightly as he pulled [the suit] up around his vitals” (78). This reminds him of unchanging cycle of procreation, life, and death that circumscribes the limits of mortal existence. He sees that he is neither his father nor his son, but a separate individual following his own cycle of mortality.