In the short story “A White Heron” by Sarah Orne Jewett, shy nine-year-old Sylvia lives with her grandmother on a farm. Sylvia has come to love all of nature’s creatures.
One day, a friendly young man approaches her, looking for a white heron to shoot and add to his collection. The youthful hunter is invited to stay at the grandmother’s house that evening.
After dinner, he offers a reward to anyone who can lead him to the rare bird. The next day, Sylvia joins the young man in the woods looking for the heron, but they do not find it. The next morning Sylvia goes out looking for the heron’s nesting site.
She climbs a tall tree and spots the bird, but suddenly feels a deep connection with it and decides to keep its location secret. She says nothing to the hunter and he leaves.
Years later, Sylvia wonders if she should have revealed the nesting spot.
The narrator comments that the splendors of nature that Sylvia enjoys as an adult are what are truly valuable.
The woodlands of Maine are among the most beautiful natural settings in the United States.
For Sylvia, they are a wondrous source of deep connections with nature.
The center of the woods near the pond vibrates with what seems like a magical energy, and it is there that Sylvia, who climbs the tallest tree, spots the rare white heron.
About Our Author !
“A White Heron” is the most popular story Sarah Orne Jewett (1849–1909) wrote. As a young girl, she often accompanied her father, a physician, as he made house calls through rural Maine. Later, she would fold her keen recollections of the region’s people and wildlife into her stories, novels, and poems. She sold her first story to the Atlantic Monthly when she was nineteen, and she soon became well-known for her precise descriptions and sharp observations of the women and men who lived near the Atlantic Ocean in southern Maine.
Theme & Techniques
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The most heart-warming and explicit moral from this story is acknowledging the true value of what we have and realizing that principles should always outshine anything else.
Jewett conveyed this outstandingly through Sylvia's brave and nature-oriented character; Sylvia neglected the cash prize to achieve the greater prize of keeping the white heron safe and alive.
Sarah used various approaches to help the reader in visualizing the events and grasping the theme, including : imagery and symbolism.
Imagery is the language that uses sensory details to provoke the reader's senses and to allow the reading to live the scene. For instance, the vivid description of the pine tree and the woods initiates the connection between humans and nature through establishing an image of Sylvia's actions and facial expressions during the events of the story.
Symbolism is the use of an object, character, animal, or place to represent something else. One example would be Sylvia's refusal to reveal the heron's spot; that symbolizes loyalty considering that Sylvia felt loyal to nature and therefore kept the heron's location a secret. In addition, Sylvia's character development represents self-discovery as she discovered what she honors most ( nature ) throughout the story.
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