A White Heron Literary Analysis

"A White Heron" is a romance short story by Sarah Jewett. This is a story that shows the power of the imagination and the purity of fantasizing about a better life for one's self. The plot in "A White Heron" also reflects the story's theme. Jewett often used young, innocent, and imaginative children in her stories to embody the purity and majesty of nature. She compared these children with adults to draw the contrast between the societal stringent attitudes and the natural inquisitive selves. Children are commonly forced into situations where they must make decisions on nature's behalf. So too was Sylvia, faced with the choice of revealing nature's location to the hunter or preserving the life of the bird and remaining loyal to her somewhat

However, I feel like this is easily counteractive. Quite simply yes it is slightly disturbing that at such a young age Sylvia had to make these difficult decisions however that also gives a realistic feeling to the story because not everybody is fortunate enough to have a life where their parents protect them and don't have to take care of themselves. Those who view her decision to save the bird as selfish and like she wasn't thinking about her family, I feel, don't truly understand the story. Sylvia is more of the type of person who protects herself and thinks about her life and we can see this when she's envisioning her future and what she wants for herself and kind of gets carried away all she was doing was wanting to save that bird so it too can pursue its own life and have its

Its supernatural size and beauty immediately establish its symbolic importance and its association with some higher values of life. But initially, it has only aesthetic value, rousing her 'first frightened and then fascinated' interest. It is Mrs. Tilley who first sees potential gains of money in the bird's presence and it is she who plants the seed that the heron may be worth more to her dead than alive. But it is Sylvia herself who first receives the idea of the bird's worth as a source of'self-realization or discovery'. And she is not slow to act on the opportunity that presents itself. The use of birds is the first clue we have to the dominant theme of this story - a theme as familiar to Jewett's fiction as the presence of New England. As many know, it was from England that many fled to try and build better lives for themselves in what would then become, the United States of America. Furthermore, the distinction between the caged canary and the wild white heron immediately establishes the story as a variation on the 'conflict of freedom and self-realization with the claims of civilized life'. Sylvia, remarkable for both the freedom and self-realization she enjoys in her 'less-frequented place', is almost a stranger to 'the ways of living' up the 'little hill farm'. But in the caged bird, she recognizes something consonant with her own inhibited life. It carries pencil and paper, emblems of expression and