The Heroine in A White Heron Essay

The beauty of the story is about authentically conveying the author’s emotion experience, depicting the true feeling of the characters, and delivering the thought process by putting readers into their shoes, in order to create resonance with the readers, like her emotion for the love of nature, for her struggle towards money, and for the crush she had towards the hunter. Sylvia’s love of nature showed from “As for Sylvia herself, it seemed as if she had never been alive at all before she came to live at the farm. (5)”. She found her real self here, embracing the nature, knowing every life that lived here, and fully enjoying the freedom in the woods, just like a jungle fairy.

For instance, when Rose Mary left a piano outside, she expressed that “Most pianists never get the chance to play in the great out-of-doors” (33), or, when Jeannette told Rose Mary that she cannot live happily being vagrant, Rose Mary told her, “Why not? Being homeless is an adventure” (161). Therefore, the Joshua tree’s management to stay alive through turbulent climate compares and symbolizes Rose Mary’s optimistic character. When life threw lemons towards the Joshua tree in the form of wind and sand, the Joshua tree made lemonade by creating a mutualistic connection amongst itself and nature by growing sideways. The life of the Joshua tree points out how good always outshines bad which is what made it “one of the most beautiful trees [Rose Mary] had ever seen” (21) due to the way it continued to flourish in spite of the hindrances it has overcome, thus alluding to the hopeful and trusting personality Rose Mary

treeted like a child, to be seen but not to be heerd. This was the aditude in

Jane Hirshfield connects to nature at her home in Marin County, California this is where she gets her inspiration for her poems. Hirshfield published “Tree” in 2000 as a free verse poem, divided into 4 stanzas and 4 sentences to convey the nature world. The poem represents a “young redwood” (line 2) growing near a house, near a kitchen window. The redwood is already scraping against the window frame of the house, reminding the reader of the “foolish” (line 1) idea of letting it grow there. Humans were created to be one with nature, but as they evolved as a species, they were obligated to choose between the materialistic world or the world of nature.

In the novel A Separate Peace, the narrative shift in Gene’s perspective of the tree found on page 14 is an extremely crucial shift in the story. Gene’s initial reaction of the tree was when he was a boy attending Devon school in 1942; he saw the tree as unapproachable, daunting, and preposterous “The tree was tremendous, an irate, steely black steeple…I was damned if I’d climb it. The hell with it” (14). Gene had feared the tree like many other things in his life that year. Then as Gene returned to the Devon school as an adult several year after leaving, he returned to visit the same specific tree. However, Gene’s view on the tree changed dramatically. As an adult, when he saw the tree he described it as, “… not only stripped by the cold season, it seemed weary with age, enfeebled, dry” (14). The tree had lost its daunting nature and had changed in the eyes of Gene, without physically changing. The significance in this

The diction in the excerpt is an essential component to the dramatization of the plot’s central incident. Jewett uses rich language to intensify the simple nature of the main character Sylvia’s journey up a “great pine-tree.” For example, in describing the tree, the narrator uses personification as he mentions the “huge tree asleep yet in the paling moonlight.” The use of personification harkens back to those universal moments in childhood in which everything alive had human feelings, and creates an emotional attachment between the reader and the tree. Jewett also uses other figurative language, like similes, to relate the grandeur of the tree to the audience. She writes, “It [the tree] was like a great main-mast to the voyaging earth…” In comparing the tree to the great mast of a ship, the author invokes feelings of awe at its size.

One’s view on something often changes when you look at it from more than one point of view. Morality plays a significant role in any decision making process. It is hard to justify any decision that is not moral. Sarah Orne Jewett’s “A White Heron” has many elements of nature, and of the preservation of what Sylvia holds dearly. The thought provoking short story evokes emotions of caring, loving, and fear. All of these emotions are shown by different settings and characters in the story.

“ I had been watching the boys for weeks go up into that tree house from my front yard at the cottage. I’d wanted to know what was up there. My curiosity had given me my first real friends.” (4)

When the boy was tired he would sleep in the tree's shade. On page 11 and 30 it shows when the tree shows care to the boy. On page 11 it says, "And when he was tired, he would sleep in her shade." And on page 30 it says, "“well, an old stump is good for sitting and resting. Come, Boy, sit down. sit down and rest.” This shows that the tree is very caring every time the boy would ask for something she would gladly give it to him. And when the boy came for the last time she was still glad to help out when the boy was tired. Mothers gladly give what the child wants. They care about them. For example when her child is tired, they could rest on their lap or the mother would take them to their

Understanding human behaviors is a complicated job because it requires many studies on various people in a long period of time. Sarah Orne Jewett introduces an image of a nine-year-old girl, Sylvia, innocence mind with a mature decision into her story, “A White Heron.” Sylvia does not want to betray the love for nature from an offer of an attractive hunter. She discovers what is most important to her after overcoming many internal thoughts about what she will do with the money from the hunter’s offer, or fulfills her passion with a natural world. The story is contained both situational and dramatic irony, which provides a different point of view of Sylvia in the society. Not everyone is motivated by money. The setting and keeping of economic power is central to Sylvia’s existence and activities.

In the beginning of the book, Melinda is assigned to draw a tree in art class. First Melinda goes to art class and gets a simple tree to draw. “Tree. Tree? It’s too easy” (p.12).

Melinda scraps branches from under shrubs and trees. Melinda’s cleaning helps her dad see the damage in the yard. This is the point where Melinda’s attitude starts to change. She has been opening up, getting closer to releasing the truth. Later on her dad gets an arborist to come look at the sick tree. The arborist starts chopping off the sick branches on the tree. Melinda’s dad explains to the neighborhood children that by the end of the summer the tree will be the biggest, prettiest tree on the block. That line made me think of Melinda. If Melinda could get her secret out couldn’t she flourish like the tree? At this point the tree means hope. There is hope for the tree, just like there is hope for Melinda. The tree is an ugly thing but it is turning into a beautiful, just like

Sylvia is so at one with the world around her that her grandmother implies to the hunter that “the wild creatures counts her as one o’ themselves,” in which he offers “ten dollars to anyone” who leads him to a white heron (Jewett 138-39). The

• the land which is now just east of Morwalds is already “partially cleared", this is Wilfred Moore’s chosen plot and as no pine trees have been taken Wilfred has yet to build his handsome log cabin. This he will do in the coming summer.;

The wild west wind came down through the fields, rousing the deer from their reverie, and swaying the bee-studded flowers. From its highest bough to the loose sand on its mighty roots, the ancient tree quivered lightly, yet was untroubled by the breeze. Many a storm had passed over the tree, yet no rain had managed to drown those fathomless roots, no hail had managed to bite the iron bark.