Sarah Orne Jewett’s short story "A White Heron” is a beautiful realistic narration set in Maine, at the end of the nineteenth century. A young girl, Sylvia, is the heroine in a quest journey. As in traditional stories in literature, she follows what Dan Bronzite reports as "The Twelve Stages of the Hero's Journey". She will leave what had become her usual world to enter an extraordinary one full of wonders but also scary, to wind up again in her ordinary world but as a changed person. Sylvia’s voyage is one of great importance as it will change her character forever. Sylvia starts her journey in a normal place, “the woods (…) one June evening”; she is “a little girl” with “her cow”, at home in “a beautiful place” and happy in that rural …show more content…
setting as “she never had been alive at all before she came to live at the farm.” Sylvia does not like the city and its industrial world, she is sensitive and loves nature as she recalls empathetically of “a wretched geranium that belonged to a town neighbor.” Her world is abruptly shattered, and she is “horror-stricken” as she hears a “boy’s whistle, determined, and somewhat aggressive.” This is the beginning of the adventure, the disruptive power of civilization, “the enemy has discovered her”, and the young man asks her to bring him to her place to rest. Sylvia is “alarmed” and “trembling” in front of the young fellow with “a gun over his shoulder”. When “the ornithologist” talks about his “collection of birds” that are “stuffed and preserved” as he has “shot or snared every one” himself, Sylvia pretends to ignore him. When he asks for her help as he understands that she “knows all about birds” and wants to get the white heron he saw, she does not respond even as she “knew that strange bird.” She rejects the call to adventure. Sylvia seems to ignore the hunter’s plea and concentrates on the “hop-toad”. Although Sylvia starts to think about the quest of the heron, “that strange white bird”, as she has “lost her first fear of the friendly lad”, she does not “lead the guest”, and she is not ready to give away her knowledge. Even as she finds him “so charming and delightful”, she still cannot comprehend “why he killed the very birds he seemed to like so much.” This is where Sylvia can recognize her mentor, her grandmother who gave her a safe home more adapted to her needs as in the city where she was not able to grow, poor “little maid who had tried to grow for eight years in a crowded manufacturing town”. Mrs. Tilley adds that “the wild creaturs counts (Sylvia) one o’themselves”, she compares her to her son Dan, the crow tamer, who may also be Sylvia’s mentor there as she “takes after him”. As the child hears these family stories, she gathers more confidence in her abilities to understand and feel the forest and its inhabitants; she perceives her grandmother’s “hint of family sorrows” and may later recall them to confer her courage and willpower in her quest. It is time for her to “(cross) the Threshold”; she knows she must climb the “great pine-tree” where she can “find the hidden nest”. Sylvia is dedicated to her quest, “what a spirit of adventure, what wild ambition!” She is pushed to it by her “loving admiration” for the young hunter and her deep desire to please him, but also by a sense of self-discovery and willingness to see the sea as she “believed that whoever climbed to the top of (the pine) could see the ocean” as well as “find the hidden nest”. Sylvia now is tested by nature; she leaves her house and it is as if nature is trying to make her change her mind, whispering to her not to search and reveal the heron’s secret “Alas, if the great wave of human interest (…) should sweep away the satisfactions of an existence with nature”. On her way to the top of the tree, the “small and silly” child is like a bird herself, in a fight with the “monstrous” element, she is “almost lost”, she makes a “dangerous pass” between an oak and the pine-tree; she takes “a daring step” and “the way was harder than she thought” but she does not renounce even as she is “scratched” and if it is so much higher “ the tree seemed to lengthen himself” than she had anticipated. But the tree also feels the child and is a living being that “must (…) have been amazed as it felt this determined spark of human spirit” and whose “least twigs held themselves to advantage” Sylvia on her way up. The tree feels the child belongs to nature; it “must have loved his new dependent”, “the brave, beating heart of the solitary gray-eyed child”. It keeps her protected and calms the summer wind as it “stood still” for her. Up so high, she is “trembling and tired but wholly triumphant”, but she is in her “inmost cave” as she sees the sea and feels like “she too could go flying away among the clouds.” She realizes the beauty of the physical world around her “truly it was a vast and awesome world.” But there, she wonders about her quest and its value “was (finding the heron’s nest) the only reward”? Sylvia faces the reservations and suspicions that first emerged upon her call to adventure. But “look, look”, she finds the secret she was looking for near the “dead hemlock”. She is “well satisfied” and “makes her perilous way down again” so excited but in pain as the trip is dangerous and her “fingers ache and her lamed feet slip.” While she wants to reveal “how to find his way straight to the heron’s nest”, she unconsciously doubts again of the worthiness of “the stranger” as she thinks of him as a stranger, an outsider, not a friend. Now is the time for her “supreme ordeal”, the “deep inner crisis” where everything she “holds dear is put on the line”: will she reveal the bird’s secret? The young hunter “is so well worth making happy” but “No, she must keep silence!” Sylvia owns the prize, she returns home with the knowledge of the heron’s nest’s location so she can get her reward but she also understands that she owes nature and her conscience the truth.
“What is it that suddenly forbids her and makes her dumb?” Sylvia, nymph of the woods as her name etymologically suggests, hears the “murmur of the pine’s green branches”, “remembers how (she and the white heron) watched the sea and the morning together”; she cannot “give its life away.” She decides between her own individual purpose and the one of “a Higher Cause” when she chooses to remain untainted from the sin of being the accomplice of the white bird’s murder. Sylvia is the guardian of the forest and its beauty that can “bring (its) gifts and graces” to her. This is her “return with the elixir”: she has matured, the hunter leaves without his prize and the white heron is saved. From the start, Sylvia had been under the charm of the man who speaks “gallantly” and “alarmed” her. Even then, she felt he could be her downfall as “she hung her head as if the stem of it was broken”, just like her former neighbor’s geranium; he represents the city and its dangers, people, the foe for someone like her “afraid of folks”. He tries to win her over by giving her a knife, and Sylvia can sense her “woman’s heart (…) vaguely thrilled by a dream of love.” She has a “premonition of that great power” and the pain she will endure when “the guest went away disappointed” whilst she “could have served and followed him and loved him as a dog
loves!” In the end, during her quest, Sylvia learns that the world is larger and more important than herself; her difficult journey proves that she is deeply desires to please others but not by betraying nature; she follows her conflicted but pure heart. It is the romantic victory of an environmental philosophy against the violence and destructive power of mankind even as Sylvia, who had been surely falling in love with the hunter, suffers and discovers the pain of loneliness that will remain for a long time. Giving up her emotional desires to make an ethical choice is part of Sylvia’s self-discovery, sexual awakening, and loss of innocence which are the result of her hero’s quest.
In the Time of the Butterflies is a historical fiction novel by Julia Alvarez based on events that occurred during the rule of Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. This book shows the hardships the Mirabal Sisters had to go through while being part of an underground effort to overthrow the dictatorship of Trujillo. It also shows that ultimately, it was their courage that brought upon their own death. Alvarez wants us to understand anyone and everyone has the potential to be courageous.
Throughout this poem the speaker contemplates stealing a book of poetry. The poet Julia Alvarez gives the action of stealing the book a deeper meaning while portraying the significance of the book to the speaker. Julia Alvarez does this through the use of many poetic devices. Throughout this excerpt of the poem “On Not Shoplifting Louise Bogan's ‘The Blue Estuaries’” by Julia Alvarez, the poet conveys the speaker's discoveries through the use of imagery and diction in order to portray the overall meaning of the work as a whole.
Of Nightingales That Weep Chapter 1 This chapter is about Takiko and her first family home. It tells a lot about her family. They talk about the war in this chapter also. Takiko’s mother decides that she will remarry after her father dies.
This essay will be looking at and examining the theme of characters having or going through a Journey, and how they are conveyed by author, Gwen Harwood, in her poems, ‘Suburban Sonnet: Boxing Day’ and ‘In the Park’. With the journeys in these two poems seemingly being written as reflections, where the characters are going through and struggling with the journeys they’re undertaking, I’ll be looking at what the journeys in these poems are representing and what they are showing readers about the characters who have had them.
At the beginning of this piece, we are quickly introduced to the different lifestyles between the farm she lived in and the one she encountered when she left for New York. Easily distinguished is the contrast made by the use of the word “folks” when she mentions her relatives from “down under” but calls the New Yorkers “people.” The North is seen as a literary archetype as an unknown lucrative place, a strange place where “the flowers cost a dollar each.” This is positioned as a welcome mat to a world of differences between these two environments, which leads us to the core of her childhood life.
Sylvia uses her daydreams as an alternative to situations she doesn't want to deal with, making a sharp distinction between reality as it is and reality as she wants to perceive it. For instance, as they ride in a cab to the toy store, Miss Moore puts Sylvia in charge of the fare and tells her to give the driver ten percent. Instead of figurin...
The tile of the poem “Bird” is simple and leads the reader smoothly into the body of the poem, which is contained in a single stanza of twenty lines. Laux immediately begins to describe a red-breasted bird trying to break into her home. She writes, “She tests a low branch, violet blossoms/swaying beside her” and it is interesting to note that Laux refers to the bird as being female (Laux 212). This is the first clue that the bird is a symbol for someone, or a group of people (women). The use of a bird in poetry often signifies freedom, and Laux’s use of the female bird implies female freedom and independence. She follows with an interesting image of the bird’s “beak and breast/held back, claws raking at the pan” and this conjures a mental picture of a bird who is flying not head first into a window, but almost holding herself back even as she flies forward (Laux 212). This makes the bird seem stubborn, and follows with the theme of the independent female.
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
Sylvia doesn't understand the difficulty so to show what she went through the author compared it to a situation between the tree and her skin. Sarah Orne Jewett shows the story coming to life by the textual evidence in her
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.
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.
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.
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:
The novel opens with the imagery and symbolism that is essential effectively telling the story. A grown Louise imagines the ferry ride to Rass Island she will soon take to pick up her newly widowed mother. The only way on and off the island, the ferry represents more than transportation, it is a lifeline between ...
The nineteenth century was a time of economic, technologic, and population growth. These changes created problems in everyone’s daily lives. Two examples of things that affected the lives of many were disease and sanitation. Disease and sanitation led to high mortality rates in Nineteenth- Century England. This relates to North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell as it takes place during nineteenth century England and multiple characters died presumably due to disease.