Essays on A White Heron

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 ...

American Literature

Choose two characters studied this semester. Do they have similar problems? Look beyond the specific details of their circumstances in order to find the essential common dilemma they face. For example, explain what common issue confronts both Sylvia in “A White Heron” and Carrie in Sister Carrie. Both stories are similar in that they confront similar issues of self-doubt and principle. In Sylvia’s case it is the protection of a bird which she deems to be important for survival. Although she befriends the hunter in the story she cannot seems to bring herself to reveal that she saw a ...

What is environmentalism? Well, before giving an answer to this question, it is important to revisit a story written by Sarah Orne Jewett. In the story, A White Heron, Sarah narrates of a little girl who enjoys and treasures nature as it is. She enjoys spending time in the woodland looking for their cow, and enjoys the sound of singing birds. One day, the girl meets a hunter who promises to given some money to anyone who leads him to a white heron. At first, the offer appears too tempting, but, the little girl, Sylvia, does not give in. She decides to keep ...

The philosophy Boethius once said as he reflected on his life while wasting away in a prison cell, “there is no pain so great as the contemplation of former happiness in present sorrow.” Nostalgia, is a universal theme present in the cannon of literature. The theme explores looking back at a better time from the vantage point of a deplorable condition. This essay explores this theme in two different stories, that unfold the at different thematic tempos. In Jewett the white heron, the focus character Sylvia resists the intrusion of a man in her quite environment of living with her grandma on her ...