32 pages • 1 hour read
Sarah Orne JewettA White Heron
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1886A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The White Heron
The white heron symbolizes the independence and wonder of nature, which directly supports the themes of Protecting the Natural World and the Individual’s Role in Conservation. The beautiful, white bird with his “steady sweep of wings and outstretched slender neck and crested head” is presented as a symbol and major character (678). The plot and tension center around this rare bird. When Sylvia sees the heron's perspective on the world from the top of the tree, she is inspired to refuse the hunter. She chooses the heron, and thus the preservation of nature, over the hunter’s desire to control it.
Alternatively, since Sylvia can be seen as making a spiritual journey as she climbs the great pine, the heron is a symbol of enlightenment, purity, and freedom. Sylvia becomes enlightened by the bird’s presence, for she realizes nature must be safeguarded from outside influence. She connects with the heron for his purity, matching her youthful innocence, and his freedom to soar through the world, untouched and untroubled, as she would like to be—tucked away in the woods and undisturbed by strangers.
The Pine Tree
The pine tree symbolizes transition, power, and potential, all of which relate to themes of the Individual’s role in Conservation and Embracing Youth and Innocence. When she ascends the tree, Sylvia is given a new outlook from this high vantage point. The tree’s perspective inspires the girl to exercise her power. She discovers that her joy is as important as the hunter’s and that she has the power to save the heron’s life. The narrator says that Sylvia feels “wholly triumphant” and “as if she too could go flying away among the clouds” (677), which signals that Sylvia has transcended her youthful infatuation with the hunter to value nature.
Alternatively, the pine tree could represent overcoming fear—for she climbs with “utmost bravery” (676)—and an open-minded view that sees her actions within a bigger picture. As a timid girl, Sylvia must face her fears of the strenuous climb and of disappointing the hunter. The cliche of “seeing the forest for the trees” is ironically appropriate here, for the tree brings Sylvia from the material plane (her love interest and human desires) to the spiritual one (a higher moral code in connection to the universal spirit of nature).
The Gun
The hunter’s gun symbolizes human (and especially male) dominance over nature. It is both a sexual (phallic) and technological symbol. Sylvia cannot control the gun, and she feels sorrow for the birds the hunter kills. The gun also correlates to the theme of the Individual’s Role in Conservation, for the hunter destructively harms the forest. He plays the opposite role of Sylvia and her grandmother, who don’t harm the woods but live peacefully with the setting as a part of the ecosystem. The hunter invades and attacks this ecosystem, and his gun is the symbol of this dominance over nature. This technology overcomes the wilderness, a man-made invention that only harms.
On the secondary level, the gun reveals the hunter’s physical maturity compared to Sylvia and is a sexual symbol. Sylvia is too young to understand the gun or sexuality. The device frightens and confuses her, which relates to the theme of Embracing Youth and Innocence. Though she develops a crush on the hunter, she is not developed enough emotionally or physically to act on these emotions. Sylvia wouldn’t understand the sexual and psychological aspects of being in love with someone, for she is only nine and has lived a sheltered life with no hint of romance. She’s never opened up to people, and in fact cannot communicate deeply with the hunter to form a bond, as she can with wildlife and the woods. She doesn’t comprehend the apparently unnecessary violence of the gun, which is used to kill “the very birds” the hunter claims to “like so much” (674).
