Professor Zoller
Life Narratives
9/18/2012
Response to “The Ring
of Time” by E.B. White
I think
that the main point that E.B White is trying to get across in his narrative, The Ring of Time, is that no matter how
much we want it to stop, time moves on. At the beginning of the essay, White
tells the story of a girl who is a performer at a circus and whom he sees
riding a horse. The circus girl performs various tricks on the horse while
trotting around a circular ring and White comments that the girl has no grasp
on time. He believes that the girls goes around the track and does not realize
that time is passing. She is absorbed in her activity and in her youth. White
remarks that, “The only sense that is common… is the sense of change- and we
all instinctively avoid it, and object to the passage of time, and would rather
have none of it.” In connection to his narrative about the circus girl, White
seems to say that all people entertain puerile thoughts of wishing to stop
time. The very title of the narrative, The
Ring of Time is a reference to the circus girl and how she continued to go
around the track, satisfied to believe that she would always be going around
the track, that she would always be as happy as she was in that moment. White
is saying that we all struggle with wanting a “ring of time;” we all, at some
point in our lives, want to remain as we are.
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