A White Heron Some people go through situations where the outcome gives them a new outlook on life, much like Sylvia in the short story, A White Heron. The hunter is the corruption that breaks Sylvia's innocence and leads Sylvia to a new experience in her life. The great pine tree enhances Sylvia's courage by making her a better person, while also posing as a guardian for the white heron and an obstacle for Sylvia. The white heron provides a light for Sylvia of her connection with nature. The white heron provides a sense of freedom in Sylvia's mind. The benefit of the hunter, the great pine tree, and the white heron all coincide to help Sylvia find a new outlook on her life. In the beginning of A White Heron, Sylvia makes acquaintance with …show more content…
The story mentions, "a great pine-tree stood, the last of its generation" (Jewett). Sylvia was well aware of this tree, and the challenge it presented to her. Sylvia begins to represent similar characteristics of the tree, standing up even though she and the tree have no choice but to stand strong. Sylvia has a choice to help the hunter and pick man over nature, but she feels one with nature and wants to stand up for nature. Sylvia "thought of the tree with a new excitement, for why, if one climbed it at bread of the day, could not one see all the world, and easily discover from whence the white heron flew" (Jewett). Sylvia believes that if someone climbed the great pine tree they could find the white heron, and she plans on trying to find the heron's nest for the hunter. While the hunter and her grandmother were asleep she sneaks out of the house to get a head start to find the heron. Sylvia starts climbing trees to scout for the white heron, and "She crept out along the swaying oak limb at last, and took the daring step across into the old pine-tree" (Jewett). Sylvia has determination while being courageous jumping from tree to tree to find the white heron, also feeling a refreshing spark of energy. This energy is described as a "determined spark of human spirit wending its way from higher branch to branch" (Jewett). Sylvia has this excitement expecting to see the world once she climbs to the top of the pine tree. Once she reaches the top, she sees birds flying and "Sylvia felt as if she too could go flying away among the clouds" (Jewett). While being up high as the clouds, Sylvia could see the world as beautiful unlike she has seen before. While being sky level, Sylvia finally spots the white herons
Furthermore, they all have an outside threat. The ornithologist might shoot the heron and make it a specimen while the man is suffered from the severe cold weather. In the stories both characters have to deal with the danger from outside world. Sylvia has to climb upon the tree to see where the heron is, the man has to avoid the snow falls from the tree.
The population of the whooping cranes most definitely gets affected from precipitation, because the population gets affected negatively with high precipitation levels present, while positively with low precipitation levels. The population of the whooping cranes gets affected this way because if there were high precipitation levels for a year, the hatching success rate drastically decreases from the precipitation, who damages the eggs laid by the cranes. By either breaking the eggs, making the cranes not be present to incubate their eggs, or actually destroying the birds’ nests. Also, the high precipitation levels may even cause a few fatalities, which is a very serious problem involving this particular endangered species. While with low precipitation
The short story, “The White Heron” and the poem, “A Caged Bird” are both alike and different in many ways. In the next couple of paragraphs I will explain these similarities and differences and what makes them unique to the stories.
Through appeals to ethos and appeals to pathos, “A White Heron” by Sarah Orne Jewett and “The Happy Prince” by Oscar Wilde both accomplish to get across the importance of selflessness in humanity. During these two stories the protagonists of each sacrifice something that could have helped them or what they wanted to help others around them.
While the man is thinking about the wolf and the impact it had on its surroundings, he knows that many people would be afraid of the it. Realizing that something can be both “terrible and of great beauty,” the man's sense of awe is heightened. While laying under the moonlight, the man thinks about the wolf both figuratively and literally running through the dew on the grass and how there would be a “rich matrix of creatures [that had] passed in the night before her.” Figuratively, this represents the wolf running into heaven. However, the man imagining the wolf literally running and the beauty of her free movements across the “grassy swale” creates a sense of awe that he has for the wolf. A wolf running towards someone would be terrifying, but a wolf running with freedom is magnificently beautiful. After imagining this, the man knows that even though wolves can be terrifying, “the world cannot lose” their sense of beauty and
Whitney introduces the secondary theme, being that hunters usually have no empathy for their prey. This is one of the first uses of irony in the story. Metaphors and Similes are often used in this story, so the reader has a better image of the setting, this is something, and I find Connell did incredibly well, for instance when he refers to the darkness of the night as moist black velvet, the sea was as flat as a plate-glass and it was like trying to see through a blanket. Rainsford begins his epic struggle for survival after falling overboard when he recklessly stood on the guard rail, this is our first example of how Rainsford manages to conquer his panic and think analytically and there by ensuring his survival.
By presenting the competing sets of industrial and rural values, Jewett's "A White Heron" gives us a rich and textured story that privileges nature over industry. I think the significance of this story is that it gives us an urgent and emphatic view about nature and the dangers that industrial values and society can place upon it and the people who live in it. Still, we are led to feel much like Sylvia. I think we are encouraged to protect nature, cherish our new values and freedoms, and resist the temptations of other influences that can tempt us to destroy and question the importance of the sublime gifts that living in a rural world can bestow upon us.
After that, she describes what is around her and the startling feeling of such a new environment. “What elicits the gasp is the fact that they are standing in a forest, her back pressed up against a huge, ancient tree trunk. The trees are bare and black, their branches stretching into the bright blue expanse of sky above them. The ground is covered in a light dusting of snow that sparkles and shines in the sunlight. It is a perfect winter day and there is not a building in sight for miles, only an expanse of snow and wood. A bird calls in a nearby tree, and one in the answers it.” This paragraph helped me see a huge area of pleasant, old, and peaceful oaks that are living in a natural and fresh world. I think of a day in winter where it is slightly warm and not a cloud in the sky. From the way the text exclaimed “birds calling”, I hear a chirp of a bird similar to the sound I hear when I wake up after sleeping in. At the end of this chapter, Isobel has to debate with herself whether or not all of this has been real. “Isobel is baffled. It is real. She can feel the sun against her skin and the bark of the tree beneath her fingers. The cold of the snow is palpable, though she realizes her dress
• In the gym, the gym teacher announced that they were going to start a new unit. The new unit was volleyball.
In Cold Mountain and "A Poem for the Blue Heron", tone is established in a multitude of ways. These two pieces of literature describe the characteristics and actions of a blue heron, both aiming for the same goal. However, Charles Frazier and Mary Oliver approach their slightly differing tones employing organization, metaphoric language, and diction.
Nine-year-old Sylvia is a child who lives in the wood. Her name, ‘‘Sylvia,’’ and her nickname, ‘‘Sylvy,’’ come from the Latin silva meaning ‘‘wood’’ or ‘‘forest.’’ Sylvia lives in the middle of the woods with grandma Tilley and hardly sees anyone else. She remembers when she lived in the city but never wants to return there. However, when she comes across a hunter who is an older man, she enjoys being around another human being and is not sure what to do with the conflicting emotions she starts to feel. He offers to give her money in exchange for giving up the nesting spot of the white heron. She is the only person who can give him what he needs. What she has to think about though is the betrayal of her relationship with nature and whether or not it is worth it. In the end, she does not reveal the heron’s nesting place.
Throughout the late 19th century following the Industrial Revolution, society became focused on urban life and began to neglect the importance of rural society and nature. In “A White Heron” Sarah Orne Jewett, through Sylvia’s decision to protect the heron, contemplates the importance of nature and rural society. In particular, Jewett employs the cow grazing scene to show the importance of and solitude that Sylvia finds in rural life. When the hunter appears and Sylvia accompanies him on his journey to find the bird, his actions and speech reveal the destructiveness of urban society on nature. The scene when Sylvia climbs the tree to find the heron, initially in order to please the hunter and satisfy her new love for him, shows her realization
Mrs. Tilly clearly explains this by saying “There ain’t a foot o’ ground she don’t know er way over, and the wild creaturs counts her one o’ themselves” (Jewett 75). Her oneness with nature allowed those around her to take comfort in her as if she was one of the creatures that resided within the trunks or swamp around her. Mrs. Tilly and the ornithologist seem to recognize that there is hardly no distinction between Sylvia and the natural world. Sylvia is seen as innocent, childlike and easily swayed in the eyes of Mrs. Tilly and the young man; however, she is brave in the presence of nature. “There was the huge tree asleep yet in the paling moonlight, and small and silly Sylvia began with utmost bravery to mount to the top of it…” (Jewett 77). Her natural inclination for the innocence of nature allows her to defy the fear or perhaps control that man seems to have towards nature. Instead Sylvia does not see herself as controlling those around her but to become a part of a group as she did not belong to the growing industrial world. Elizabeth Ammons perfectly describes Jewett’s story in the following excerpt from her article:
With all this, the author has achieved the vivid implication that aggressive masculine modernization is a danger to the gentle feminine nature. At the end of the story, Sylvia decides to keep the secret of the heron and accepts to see her beloved hunter go away. This solution reflects Jewett?s hope that the innocent nature could stay unharmed from the urbanization. In conclusion, Sylvia and the hunter are two typical representatives of femininity and masculinity in the story?The white heron? by Sarah Orne Jewett, Ph.D.
Ships are a huge part of the story. Hal’s ship (The Heron) is his pride and joy, and the entire culture of Skandia, which is heavily based on Vikings, is a sea-based community. Boys that go through Brotherband training often join the same crews and spend years raiding, sailing, and relaxing together, and the ships are a central part to this. On chapter six, Hal says, “he exulted in the feeling of being underway, at the helm [steering platform] of his own ship”. This basically describes the Skandian love for ships and sailing.