Life In generations people are raised in different values regarding the structure in families. People have different views of what and how family should be or look like. E.B. White and Barbara Kingsolver are authors who represent two different values in families. E.B. White essay “Once More to the Lake” is about the tradition that they keep through the family and the memories along with it. That makes him realize that you can never go back to your youth but can make those memories again with your own family and that is a very important value. Barbara Kingsolver Essay “Stone Soup” is also about how generations are blinded to the way media portrays families.
There is not one type of family in society now. There are single parents, gay couples, biracial couples, and broken families etc. In society the American family is not what everyone sees but the foundation of family should be love and support. There is always a story your family member will tell you on Thanksgiving or your parents will try to live their life through their child. They have lessons to share and that is in every family not everyone experience the same thing. The word traditions always will be a similarity in a family it doesn’t have to be the same. In my family our tradition is music, knowing how to sing or play an instrument is a tradition that brings us together and our culture also defines a family. Not every family can afford that but you can’t discriminate them saying they are not a family. We are all different in our own way because as we grow, we change and life stills go on. In “Once more to the lake” the writer reflects on his past and uses his imagination to put himself as his son. He say “I began to sustain the illusion that he was I, and therefore, by simple transportation, that I was my father”. He kept remembering what it was like to be young through his son. Barbara reflects on her past too. She says “When I was a child, I had two parents who loved me without cease”. This is what E.B. and Barbra was used to in their days.
Their society was having two parents, go fishing, piano recitals etc. But to E.B. this was a tradition to him that he thought that was “normal.” E.B. and Barbara grew up; generation was changing and saw that didn’t make a family but who you were with. E.B. tells that when he was with his son because he saw that making memories with his son was part of the value in family, sharing and showing what he did. He says: “I took along my son, who had never had any fresh water up his nose and who had seen lily pads from the train windows. On the journey over to the lake I began to wonder what it would be like.” He wants his son to experience what he experience, so his son will show his kids one day. He calls the lake a “holy spot.” because the memories of joy. In the essay “Stone Soup” Barbara makes a point about different kinds of families saying: “Divorce, remarriage, single parenthood, gay parents, and blended families simply are. They’re facts of our time.” Family life isn’t easy something or somebody in the family is suffering but love keeps them strong. Barbara refers to childhood stories where there was always a happy ending or stereotypes; how we should live, for example Cinderella, Barbie, and a novel by Reynolds price, and humpty dumpty, etc. But that not the case in real life. In E.B. essay you can experience that when the character lay on his bed reflecting and know the end of life is near for everyone but when you are a kid you don’t think about that , you enjoy life , and the things that you have that is very important. Like your love ones; it doesn’t matter what society says or thinks. You have your own family and society is not going to be there when everyone is gone: “It was like the revival of an old melodrama that I had seen long ago with childish awe. The second act climax of the drama of the electrical disturbance over a lake in America had not changed in any important respect.” Family, no one can live without it like we can’t live without air or water. It doesn’t matter who they are, it doesn’t matter what society thinks; family is family it is the person you call family and make memories with and these two authors maybe from different generations but they know family is an important value.
