White Heron Character Analysis: A White Heron

778 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essay on the white heron

Dylan Wyatt
Period: 5
8 April 2014
A White Heron Character Analyzation Essay
Life-altering decisions are often difficult to make and the long term consequences are rarely seen. For Sylvia, she had to make a difficult choice early in life. This particular choice could make her family richer but at the cost of a beautiful white heron seen by only a select few. In the end, Sylvia must decide between her personal happiness or to preserve the nature around her instead.
To better understand why this decision was so difficult to make, Sylvia must be thoroughly understood. Sylvia is only nine years old but lives a simple and humble life in the forest with her grandmother, Mrs. Tilley. Sylvia’s greatest joy in her unembellished life is playing with her cow-friend Moolly in the woods. This simple gesture shows her innocence, youth, and love of nature. Sylvia however, shows maturity by taking a hard decision upon herself even though she is traditionally not ready to do so. This decision is taken at the expense of her new-found friend who is the one to present the dilemma, which as she grows older she becomes haunted by what she could have had. The situation she is presented, put simply, is that a hunter comes to hunt a rare bird and if Sylvia and her grandmother help him, the hunter will pay them ten dollars. Astonished they both agree to do so, but when Sylvia is given the opportunity she refuses after much consideration between bettering her life or the birds. With the circumstance better explained as well as Sylvia’ s character, the decisions she makes can be a bit better understandable.
Why would she choose to find the bird and give it to the hunter? This hunter, upon entering Sylvia’s house, realizes how poor they really are. Then ...

... middle of paper ...

... it was.
In conclusion, Sylvia’s decision was arduous. She experienced many different emotions while figuring out which choice to choose. At first she was excited because she could get a reward that would help her family. Then she felt sad as nature was one of the very few things she enjoyed and a small piece of it would be destroyed if she chose to collect the reward. In the end, she chose to preserve the small piece she could. As she grew older, she began to wonder if she made the right decision. She also begins to wonder if the friendship with the hunter was worth discarding for the greater good of the bird. At the end of the short story, Sylvia asks herself “Were the birds better friends than their hunter might have been, who can tell?” (45) These feelings and motivations lead Sylvia to choose to free the white heron instead of using it for personal self-gain.

Show More
Related

  • Fire: Similarities Between White Heron And Fire

    615 Words  | 2 Pages

    There are also differences in the two stories. Sylvia is at home with the birds, beasts and almost all the creatures in the forest, she regards them as her family members, and the forest as her home. Like the author mentioned, “…but their feet were familiar with the path, and it was no matter whether their eyes could see it or not.” (118) Nevertheless, the man who build the fire is a newcomer with little experience. Sylvia’s grandmother advises her to give the bird’s location for the money which will lead to the death of the bird, whereas the survivor from Sulfur Creek advises the man to have a trail mate, a precaution that will be life-saving. The suggestion of “The old-timer on Sulphur Creek was right, he thought in the moment of

    Read More

  • The White Heron And A Caged Bird Comparison

    902 Words  | 2 Pages

    The short story, “The White Heron” and the poem, “A Caged Bird” are both alike and different in many ways. In the next couple of paragraphs I will explain these similarities and differences and what makes them unique to the stories.

    Read More

  • How Is Ethos Used In A White Heron

    499 Words  | 1 Pages

    Through appeals to ethos and appeals to pathos, “A White Heron” by Sarah Orne Jewett and “The Happy Prince” by Oscar Wilde both accomplish to get across the importance of selflessness in humanity. During these two stories the protagonists of each sacrifice something that could have helped them or what they wanted to help others around them.

    Read More

  • Themes in The Boat by Alistair MacLeod

    1028 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” At some point in life one is faced with a decision which will define the future, but only time will tell whether or not the choice was right or wrong. The Boat by Alistair MacLeod demonstrates that an individual should make their own decisions in life, be open to new experiences and changes, and that there is no way to obtain something, without sacrificing something else.

    Read More

  • The Theme in The Lesson by Toni Cade Bambara

    602 Words  | 2 Pages

    asked Sylvia she states "I'm mad, but I won't give her that satisfaction". The story takes

    Read More

  • The Power of Personality in Toni Cade Bambara's The Lesson

    1415 Words  | 3 Pages

    Sylvia’s being poor influences the way in which she sees other people and feels about them. Sylvia lives in the slums of New York; it is the only life she knows and can realistically relate to. She does not see herself as poor or underprivileged. Rather, she is content with her life, and therefore resistant to change. Sylvia always considered herself and her cousin as "the only ones just right" in the neighborhood, and when an educated woman, Miss Moore, moves into the neighborhood, Sylvia feels threatened. Ms. Moore is threatening to her because she wants Sylvia to look at her low social status as being a bad thing, and Sylvia "doesn’t feature that." This resistance to change leads Sylvia to be very defensive and in turn judgmental. Sylvia is quick to find fl...

    Read More

  • Character Analysis Of Heron Carvic

    990 Words  | 2 Pages

    Heron Carvic real name Geoffrey Rupert William Harris was an English author and actor most popular as the creator of the Miss Seeton series of novels. He also got widespread fame for portraying Gandalf in the BBC reenactment of the Hobbit for radio. He also played the part of Caiaphas the Priest on the popular play The Man Born to be King on BBC Radio. As a young man, Heron Carvic would leave Eton and travel across the Channel to France to earn a living as an actor in France. It was in France that he took up his grandmother’s name to use as his stage name, which outraged his family back home. He would meet Phyllis Neilson-Terry a woman 20 years older than him when he was 23 whom he proceeded to marry in 1958. As a writer, he created one of the most memorable of British characters in the retired art teacher Miss Emily D. Seeton. His character who was a caricature of Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple was very popular leading to Carvic publishing five

    Read More

  • x

    820 Words  | 2 Pages

    Another reason that Mrs. Wright could’ve been pushed to murder her husband was because of some evidence the women found in a shoe box and assumed to be the husbands doing was the broken neck of her canary. The canary was used by Glaspell to represent Mrs. Wright’s spirit and her marriage. The reasoning for this distinction was because earlier in the story the two women described Mrs. Wright as a free spirited person with a sweet voice like a canary. She needed to stand up for herself against the abuse and oppression as a housewife a decision made from the death of her beautiful bird. Just like the bird had a cage she too was caged in her own home. She felt in prisoned to her marriage so with free of death to her bird brought courage to give herself freedom or perhaps it’s just coincidence that her husband was discovered with a broken neck just like her canary.

    Read More

  • The Snowy Heron Chapter 6 Summary

    643 Words  | 2 Pages

    • In the gym, the gym teacher announced that they were going to start a new unit. The new unit was volleyball.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Entrapment In A Bird In The House

    976 Words  | 2 Pages

    Bird usually portrays an image of bad luck that follows afterwards and in this novel, that is. the beginning of all the bad events that occur in the rest of the novel. It all started when Margaret Laurence introduced the life of Vanessa MacLeod. protagonist of the story, also known as the granddaughter of a calm and intelligent woman. I am a woman.

    Read More

  • The Three Symbols in Trifles by Susan Glaspell

    305 Words  | 1 Pages

    The rope symbolizes death and destruction. When Mr. Wright was killed, he was chocked to death with a rope. The same way Mrs. Wright was killed, so was Mrs. Wright's bird. The death of Mr. Wright was Mrs. Wright's way of starting a new life. The bird's death symbolizes Mrs. Wright's dying because she is with Mr.

    Read More

  • Comparing the Use of Symbols in Steinbeck's The Chrysanthemums and Glaspell's Trifles

    542 Words  | 2 Pages

    Mrs. Wright, however, justified killing her husband due to Mr. Wright trapping her inside the house and how Mrs. Wright job is only to be domestic wife. When Mrs. Hale (farmer’s wife) and Mrs. Peters (sheriff’s wife) discovered a dead bird with her neck bruised all over, they start to put the pieces to the puzzle together and ...

    Read More

  • Internal Conflict In The Awakening

    817 Words  | 2 Pages

    The bird indirectly represents Enda’s failure to seek liberation and defy against the restrictions society sets upon her. The fall of the bird is reflective of Enda’s spiritual awakening as it represents society’s fatal misjudgment as she desires to rebel against society and participates an infatuation with her lover Robert. As the bird falls into the water, is like Enda as Enda rejects Victorian motherhood, only seeing destruction as an

    Read More

  • Cunnigham's Death Scene Analysis

    744 Words  | 2 Pages

    As the scene begins, Vanessa and her three children come to visit Virginia. While playing in the garden, the children find a dying bird on the ground. They decide to construct a bed of roses around the grass for the bird. Watching the children make the bed for the bird, Virginia notices the bird: “It seems to have wanted to make the smallest possible package of itself.” (Cunnigham, pg. 120). This shows that the bird fascinates Virginia; she wonders how the bird’s body becomes smaller and less important after it dies. Cunnigham also writes that “She would like to lie down on it herself” (Cunnigham, pg. 119). This shows that at this point, Virginia longs for death; she wants the same peace that the bird has been able to obtain through death; however, this longing changes once Vanessa and her children return to Charleston. When Virginia decides to take a walk, she passes the dead bird in the garden. She notices that the grave is “frightening but not entirely disagreeable, this cemetery feeling. It is real; it is all but overwhel...

    Read More

  • An Experiment with an Air Pump

    908 Words  | 2 Pages

    Upon learning of Armstrong’s motive, Isobel attempts to hang herself. As Isobel lies helpless on the floor, fighting for one last breath, Stephenson illustrates that Isobel’s “heels flutter almost imperceptibly” (92). Later, everyone gathers around Isobel’s dead body much like they did around the fluttering bird in the first experiment. “But this time Isobel, in her coffin, has taken the place of the bird in the air pump”(96). The fact that now a dead Isobel symbolizes the bird implies that this time the experiment has gone dreadfully wrong. The fact that the second experiment fails harbors a much more solemn consequence than if the first had failed. If the bird in the first experiment had died, tears would have been shed only until the purchase of a new bird. Not only does Armstrong sacrifice a human life in the name of science, but he symbolically diminishes all that the bird and Isobel represent. Isobel’s death implies the demise of freedom, will, and humanity.

    Read More

More about White Heron Character Analysis: A White Heron

Open Document