A White Heron

1-) In the story, there’s a hunter who is haunting a white heron, undauntedly. He is making a collection of the birds that he hunted himself since he was a boy. He spends his whole vacation hunting for it. He says, ’’I would give ten dollars to anybody who could show it to me’’. The little girl Sylvia, could not understand why he killed the very birds he seemed to like so much. She grieved because the White heron was elusive. When the young sportsmen and Sylvia wander the woods, she sees a great pine left there for a boundary mark. Sylvia believes that whoever climbed to the top could see the ocean. She thought of the tree with a new excitement because if the one climbed the tree, could not see all the world and easily discover from whence the white heron flew, mark the place, and find the hidden nest. She feels so excited about these thoughts. At night, when the young sportsmen and the hostess were sound asleep, Sylvia stole out of the house and follows the pasture path through the woods. There was a huge tree and she began utmost bravery to mount to the top of it, with her bare feet and fingers that pinched and held like bird’s claws. She makes a dangerous pass from one tree to the other, and she climbs to the top. She sees the sea that dawning sun making a golden dazzle over it, then she sees the white heron’s nest in the sea of green branches. She knows his secret now, she is well satisfied, she’s 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 heron’s nest. She goes back home, the grandmother and the sportsman stand at the door and question her, and the splendid moment has come to speak but Sylvia does not speak of the dead hemlock tree by the green marsh, while the young man’s kind appealing eyes are looking straight in her own. He can make them rich with money, he has promised, and they are poor now. ‘’No, she must keep silent! When the great world for the first time puts out a hand to her, must she thrust it aside for a bird’s sake?’’ The murmur of the pine’s green branches is in her ears, she remembers how the white heron came flying and how they watched the sea in the morning together. And Sylvia cannot speak, she cannot tell the heron’s secret and give its life away. ‘’Whatever treasures were lost to her, woodlands and summer-time, remember! bring your gifts and graces and tell your secrets to this lonely child!’’

2-) Sylvia and her grandmother has a good relationship. Sylvia's mother, it seems, had told Mrs. Tilley that she was "'Afraid of folks'" when Mrs. Tilley made the "unlikely choice" of Sylvia from her daughter's houseful of children.  However, Sylvia had "tried to grow for eight years in the crowded manufacturing town," and only seemed to come "alive" when she moved to the farm. Mrs. Tilley saw something in Sylvia that no one else had, and her choice was great. Mrs. Tilley didn’t have much time to spend with her son Dan, so she gets to have a second chance at a relationship with Sylvia.

The relationship between Sylvia and the stranger is a strange mixture of companionship and rivalry. Sylvia is afraid of him at first sight, she is a shy child, but after spending some time together she begins to like him a deven has a crush on him. ‘’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.’’ The stranger treats her kindly and likes to see the charm in her eyes, he becomes a great company of her.

3-) The title is a white heron because the heron’s function is important in the story. The story evaluates the hunter and his desire to haunt the white heron and add it to his collection. Sylvia is little but a brave girl, she keeps the heron’s secret to save its life because she knows that the haunter will kill it and destroy the beauty. Even if they need the money of the stranger, she tells nothing to him. She chooses life and nature over him and his money. Sylvia’s attitude and the white heron are really important in this story.

4-) Sylvia is a curious, observant, and shy young girl with a “pale face and shining gray eyes” that easily convey if she’s feeling excited, scared, or troubled. She makes a moral choice to protect nature even if she’s still regretting the loss of her friendship with the stranger. Their climatic choice of Sylvia to save the nature she loves suggests that even if that experience involves sacrificing other things that matter, like friendship, one should choose to protect the environment. She is straight and quite understandable, it’s easy to follow her and her actions while reading the story. She thinks something and she does it, she does what she believes without hesitating. Her dichotomy makes the story draw differently and made the story better.

5-) I think the third-person narrator makes the story more understandable. For example, when Mrs. Tilley, the stranger, and Sylvia were sitting and talking together, we can read each of their feelings and thoughts, instead of only one person, without breaking from the story. If the story interference with the first person narrator, we could only know one person’s feelings and they didn’t out-come real thoughts.

For the dilemma of the story, the surprising correspondences and unities she forges between plant, animal, and human life, between past and present, and between the different human beings' consciousnesses, are fundamental.  

"Sylvia cannot speak; she cannot tell the heron's secret and give its life away." The narrator of Jewett refrains from explicitly applauding or criticizing the decision of the girl and makes it clear that Sylvia misses the handsome young man long afterward; perhaps she has lost her one chance to experience love in the wider world. Sylvy makes the only choice that can preserve her independence and integrity, between being a free heron and a dead sparrow, which is what Sylvy would symbolically become, allowing herself to be caught, raped, killed, stuffed, and displayed in the house of a man.

The writer makes personification in the story. She describes the cow as a "plodding, dilatory, provoking creature in her behavior," and "a valued companion for all that," since "companion" usually refers to another human being. "They were going away from whatever light there was," and refers to "their eyes" and "their feet". While it is not possible to say the plural pronouns are deviant, they encourage the reader to think of the girl and the cow as a pair now. We learn in the next paragraph that it is the "greatest pleasure to hide away among the huckleberry bushes," showing a sense of play that we usually associate with human intelligence in particular. 

We learn the emblematic name of the girl at this point, Sylvia. Just before we learn about Sylvia's grandmother, Mrs. Tilley, we learn the name of the cow, Mistress Mooly, and the similarity between their names makes for a humorous connection between them.

"As if she never had been alive at all before she came to live at the farm. She thought often with wistful compassion of a wretched geranium that belonged to a town neighbor''. The simple juxtaposition of the thoughts of the girl by Jewett indicates the deeper connection between human and plant life, as does the word "compassion," usually reserved for human or animal objects.

"Little birds and beasts that seemed to be wide awake, and going about their world, or else saying goodnight to each other in sleepy twitters," She characterizes their human behavior with a cautious look.

Jewett’s language must connect the hunter himself with all of nature. Were Sylvy alone so described, we could see her as a rare case; as it is, to be implied by her linguistic pattern, we must admit a much wider vision.

Sylvia looks for the heron's nest in the second section of the story, half willing to give the man the information he needs, and eventually keeps the knowledge to herself. The narrator seems to pose the option in strongly opposite terms: ''Alas if the great wave of human interest which flooded this dull little life for the first time should sweep away the satisfactions of an existence heart to heart with nature and the dumb life of the forest!''  However, the polarization between human values and nature is already proving to be an oversimplification at this point.