Theme Of Loyalty In A White Heron And Shiloh

A character’s emotions of loneliness and loyalty are often shown by the experiences that happen in their lives. In both stories “A White Heron” and “Shiloh,” loneliness is created by the lack of communication by the main characters. Other characters in the stories try to establish or prove loyalty between the main characters or nature by influencing. However, the lack of communication intensifies the loneliness and destroys loyalty to family members while establishing loyalty to self or to nature.

Sarah Jewett’s story “A White Heron” provides the reader with an example of how a lonely, little girl can become loyal to nature. Throughout the story, Sylvia is tempted by a stranger with money to break the loyal trust to her friends in nature.

Sylvia created a strong bond with the cow named Mistress Moolly and the other forms of nature by not communicating with others such as her grandmother, Mrs. Tilley. She was lonely and the animals were the only living things that she could feel comfortable around. When the stranger offered Sylvia the ten dollars for the location of the heron’s nest (Jewett 207), she has to make the decision of either being disloyal to nature and receive the money that could help her family or stay loyal to nature which she loves and lose the money.

“The image of violation and death provides an arresting contrast to the vision of life and beauty which the heron represents” (Eakin, 522).

Violation is shown by the option for Sylvia showing the hunter the nest. Death would have been presented if Sylvia let the hunter kill the birds. Instead of Sylvia showing where the bird nest was, she allowed a vision of life for herself and the birds. She also showed the beauty of loyalty and how far it can go to protect what is truly care about. The story ended with a “Dear loyalty” (Jewett, 211) to thank loyalty for staying true and not letting her give in to the guest’s wise

bribes.

Bobbie Mason’s story “Shiloh” shows that distance can create a separation between two people and sometimes, other people may try to heal it. When Leroy came home from trucking because of a bad injury, he realizes how lonely his wife was and that their marriage was falling apart. They did not communicate often while he was on the road and when coming back, they do not know how to communicate with each other especially about the death of their child. Mabel Beasley tries to mend the couple back together because she feels obligated to do so.

Leroy’s wife, Norma Jean, had been loyal to her husband all the years they had been married. Since there had been a lack of communication for so long, the loyalty has been mostly demolished and Norma Jean has created a loyalty to herself by doing what she desires to cope with the loneliness. When Mabel Beasley tries to assist, she only makes things worse by being a persistent bother in their lives.

The end of the story was left with no conclusion to what happened to their marriage or what happened to Norma Jean.

Maybe the loneliness destroyed not only the loyalty between Norma Jean and Leroy, but it destroyed her enough to end her life. Bobbie Mason answered a question in an interview about assumptions of the story and voiced, “I hear that some students think Norma Jean is going to jump because she’s standing on the edge of a cliff at the end of the story. That’s so weird. Maybe Leroy would jump but not Norma Jean. She’s a survivor” (Lyons et al. 466). Norma Jean is strong enough to handle loneliness and maintains loyal to her husband. Leroy created the loneliness between the two by always being on the road which led to him not being loyal to his

wife.

A very important lesson was learned from both of these short stories. Loneliness can be hard but when loyalty is present in the correct way, it makes the quality of life superior. Sarah Jewett and Bobbie Mason wrote about the different effects that loneliness can have on characters and that loyalty can play a big part in it. In the stories “A White Heron” and “Shiloh,” the main characters are faced with loneliness which is caused by the absence of communication. The other characters do what they want or what feels right to influence the main characters. Although the loyalty is destroyed between family members, another type of loyalty is accepted between one’s self or nature.