A White Heron, By Sarah Orne Jewett

In the short story, “A White Heron”, by Sarah Orne Jewett, there is a character that is being introduced named Sylvia, who lives on a farm with her grandmother. Even though she just moved from the city, she enjoys the farm life way more than the city life. Sylvia hears a whistle as she walks her cow back home. She noticed it was the stranger, also known as the hunter. He was carrying a gun, hoping to find a rare bird to kill known as the white heron. He asks Sylvia if she can help him find the bird and if she did, he would pay her ten dollars. Sylvia is a huge bird lover, but she takes a liking to his favor because her and her grandmother needed the money. She wakes up early one morning and climbs the tallest pine tree in order to discover the heron’s nest. Throughout her journey, she decides that she will

not tell the man where the bird lives because it would give up Sylvia getting attention and the money from the hunter. In this story, Jewett introduces three subjects, Sylvia, the hunter, and the white heron. Each subject has a meaning and different representations, but they all connect in some type of way.
Sylvia couldn’t enjoy society itself and it was hard for her to make friends. She would make friends with animals rather than humans. While walking home, she hears and sees whose whitelisting; “not a bird’s whistle which would have a sort of friendliness, but a boy’s whistle, determined, and somewhat aggressive”. (pg 177) The whistle signifies Sylvia’s distress of socializing and the hunter, who whistled represents the crowded town she had left. She brought him home to her grandmother, so he would have a place to stay. He felt that, “It was a surprise to find so clean and comfortable a little dwelling in this New England wilderness. The young man had known the horrors of its most primitive housekeeping, and the dreary squalor of that level of society which does not rebel at the companionship of hens” (pg. 178). It is clear to see that the man doesn’t feel at home while being on the farm. Due to him feeling misplaced, he sees the farm as a home of a poorer civilization.
The hunter sees Sylvia as a way to get the bird he desires after her grandmother brags about how she knows all about the animals and the farm life. “There ain’t a foot o’ ground she don’t know her way over, and the wild creatur’s counts her one o’ themselves. Squer’ls she’ll tame to come an’ feed right out o’ her hands, and all sorts o’ birds. Last winter she got the jaybirds to bangeing here, and I believe she’d ‘a’ scanted herself of her own meals to have plenty to throw out amongst ‘em, if I had n’t kep’ watch” (pg. 179). From Sylvia’s perspective, the wildlife is her home and all of these animals are her friends. In contradiction to the hunter, he views that the wildlife is not something to be cherished, like how Sylvia cherishes it.
Nevertheless, the hunter also admires animals and shares fascinating and knowledgeable facts about them, which is why Sylvia likes his company. “Sylvia would have liked him vastly better without his gun; she could not understand why he killed the very birds he seemed to like so much” (pg. 180). They connect over the same interests of the birds, even though they each have different meanings of expressing it, “But as the day waned, Sylvia still watched the young man with loving admiration. She had never seen anybody so charming and delightful; the woman’s heart, asleep in the child, was vaguely thrilled by a dream of love” (pg. 180).
Her brand new and fresh life was now endangered by the hunter who symbolizes the memory of her old home and past life, but she is thrilled and motivated to help him catch the majestic white heron. Sylvia knows about the white heron that he is trying to find, she knows where it is located and the certain tree it lives in, but, “Now she thought of the tree with a new excitement, for why, if one climbed it at break of day, could not one see all the world, and easily discover whence the white heron flew, and mark the place, and find the hidden nest?” (pg. 181).
Throughout this mission, Sylvia somewhat ends up risking of letting go the life of where she belongs and where she’s accepted.

In this life, she is seen as one of the animals herself. “Alas, if the great wave of human interest which flooded for the first time this dull little life should sweep away the satisfactions of an existence heart to heart with nature and the dumb life of the forest!” (pg. 181). She climbs and soars up a pine tree and discovers the beautiful birds nest. She is stunned from the exquisiteness and gorgeousness of the nature that surrounds her. “Where was the white heron’s nest in the sea of green branches, and was this wonderful sight and pageant of the world the only reward for having climbed to such a giddy height? Now look down again, Sylvia, where the green marsh is set among the shining birches and dark hemlocks; there were you saw the white heron once you will see him again; look, look! A white spot of him like a single floating feather comes up from the dead hemlock and grows larger, and rises, and comes close at last, and goes by the landmark pine with steady sweep of wing and outstretched slender neck and crested head” (pg.

183).
Once she discovered the location of the heron’s nest, she kept, “Wondering over and over again what the stranger would say to her, and what he would think when she told him how to find his way straight to the heron’s nest” (pg 183). All of a sudden, when the moment came to expose what she knew about the heron’s nest, she ended up being frozen and couldn’t get the words out of her mouth. She saw her and her grandmother without the money; being poor again. The hunter and grandmother try to rebuke the words out of her, “What is it that suddenly forbids her and makes her dumb? Has she been nine years growing, and now, when the great world for the first time puts out a hand to her, must she thrust it aside for a bird’s sake?” (pg 183-184).
Her chance to bond with another person, to become rich, and to end the awkwardness of her social life disappears as she reminiscences the memories she collected in the morning with the beautiful and captivated bird, “She remembers how the white heron came flying through the golden air and how they watched the sea and morning together, and Sylvia cannot speak; she cannot tell the heron’s secret and give its life away” (pg 184). She can’t give up a part of her new world to help out a man she just met, and who is symbolizing her past. Sylvia belongs to nature and to the wild. If she had let the hunter kill the bird and use it as decoration for her house, she would be divulging herself and the bird. She realized that her friendship with the man is over, “she forgot even her sorrow at the sharp report of his gun and the sight of thrushes and sparrows dropping silent to the ground, their songs hushed and their pretty feathers stained and wet with blood” (pg. 184). She realizes that she would choose the friendship of animals rather than with humans any day. “Were the birds better friends than their hunter might have been,--who can tell?” (pg 184).
In conclusion, Sylvia finds that she belongs with the animals, and that she is a part of nature. The hunter came along and reminded her of her past life in the city before the farm. He told her he would pay ten dollars if she would help him find the white heron and so she pictured her and her grandmother rich. Since she had a love for birds, she thought it would be a perfect fitting; trying to find the bird and be in the hunters company, both at the same time. They both had a deep connection for animals, but each had a different meaning towards it. However, she couldn’t bring herself to let the hunter know that she found the heron and where it lived. So, she gave up the friendship with the stranger for the bird. The white heron symbolizes Sylvia in a way of freedom, beauty, and companionship. The hunter symbolizes Sylvia’s past life in the city, and how he made it clear that she can only be friends with animals and not humans. She had a strong love for animals, and wouldn’t risk anything to destroy that bond with them, not even for humans.