White Heron Character Analysis: A White Heron

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Recommended: Essay on the white heron

Dylan Wyatt
Period: 5
8 April 2014
A White Heron Character Analyzation Essay
Life-altering decisions are often difficult to make and the long term consequences are rarely seen. For Sylvia, she had to make a difficult choice early in life. This particular choice could make her family richer but at the cost of a beautiful white heron seen by only a select few. In the end, Sylvia must decide between her personal happiness or to preserve the nature around her instead.
To better understand why this decision was so difficult to make, Sylvia must be thoroughly understood. Sylvia is only nine years old but lives a simple and humble life in the forest with her grandmother, Mrs. Tilley. Sylvia’s greatest joy in her unembellished life is playing with her cow-friend Moolly in the woods. This simple gesture shows her innocence, youth, and love of nature. Sylvia however, shows maturity by taking a hard decision upon herself even though she is traditionally not ready to do so. This decision is taken at the expense of her new-found friend who is the one to present the dilemma, which as she grows older she becomes haunted by what she could have had. The situation she is presented, put simply, is that a hunter comes to hunt a rare bird and if Sylvia and her grandmother help him, the hunter will pay them ten dollars. Astonished they both agree to do so, but when Sylvia is given the opportunity she refuses after much consideration between bettering her life or the birds. With the circumstance better explained as well as Sylvia’ s character, the decisions she makes can be a bit better understandable.
Why would she choose to find the bird and give it to the hunter? This hunter, upon entering Sylvia’s house, realizes how poor they really are. Then ...

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In conclusion, Sylvia’s decision was arduous. She experienced many different emotions while figuring out which choice to choose. At first she was excited because she could get a reward that would help her family. Then she felt sad as nature was one of the very few things she enjoyed and a small piece of it would be destroyed if she chose to collect the reward. In the end, she chose to preserve the small piece she could. As she grew older, she began to wonder if she made the right decision. She also begins to wonder if the friendship with the hunter was worth discarding for the greater good of the bird. At the end of the short story, Sylvia asks herself “Were the birds better friends than their hunter might have been, who can tell?” (45) These feelings and motivations lead Sylvia to choose to free the white heron instead of using it for personal self-gain.

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