Example Of Course Work On A White Heron By Sarah Orne Jowett

When Sylvia first meets the young man with the gun, she is very cautious and reserved: she does not look directly at him and speaks to him “almost inaudibly.” However, she soon changes her attitude to him when she sees that her grandmother trusts him and offers him hospitality. The young man is an ornithologist who shoots birds not to eat, but to add them to his taxidermy collection. Sylvia spends the whole of the next day with him, and it is clear that she develops an infatuation for him: Jowett tells us that “Sylvia still watched the young man with loving admiration,” although she does not like what he does – “she could not understand why he killed the very birds he seemed to like so much.” We might be tempted to see her feelings for the young man as a moment of epiphany – Jowett tells us that “the woman’s heart, asleep in the child, was vaguely thrilled by a dream of love” – but this is not Sylvia’s epiphany. Jowett’s story is much more subtle and complex than that.
The young man is especially interested in shooting and stuffing a beautiful white heron to add to his collection. Sylvia is aware of the brid and has seen it, and is sorely tempted by the young man’s offer of $10 to anyone who can lead him to the bird. Sylvia and her grandmother are poor and Sylvia dreams of the “many wished –for treasures” she could buy with the money. Sylvia spends a night without sleep and leaves the house before dawn to climb the tallest tree in the area of spot the white heron.
Her climbing of the tree represents her independence and autonomy. Jowett tells us it takes “the utmost bravery to mount to the top of it” and describes Sylvia as “a determined spark of human spirit.” Sylvia does reach the top and does spot the beautiful white heron; climbing the tree reinforces her affinity and intimacy with nature. The moment of her epiphany comes right at the end of the story when she returns to the farmhouse and decides, instinctively, not to reveal the location of the heron. As Jowett writes, “she cannot tell the heron’s secret and give its life away.” At this moment she rejects the material values of the adult world (the promised $10) and shows her integrity and independence