Animals Make Better Friends Anyway

Animals Make Better Friends Anyway

             Throughout Sarah Orne Jewett’s “A White Heron," Sylvia, the Latin term for “woods,” is depicted as a nature-loving protagonist facing an ultimatum: human companionship or the natural world. Alongside with the intentional choice of name, Jewett does plenty to reinforce the idea that Sylvia prefers nature to human life.

            “She waded on through the brook as the cow moved away, and listened to the thrushes with a heart that beat fast with pleasure” (Jewett 115). Early in the short story, Sylvia’s strong affinity for nature and her disillusion towards human companionship is revealed: “the child had no playmates” (114), “she never had been alive at all before she came to live at the farm” (115), “she never should wish to go home” (115). It is evident that Sylvia prefers life on the farm to her former life in the city where she was, “Afraid of folks” (115). Although it may seem lonely, Sylvia’s company is kept with animals on the farm and in the woods: “the wild creatur’s counts her one o’themselves” (116). Most notably, it appeared as if Sylvia had a friendship with the oft-lost cow: “it was a consolation to look upon the cow’s pranks as an intelligent attempt to play hide-and-seek… she lent herself to this amusement with a good deal of zest” (114).

            Sylvia’s character reaches a conflict when a boy’s “determined, and somewhat aggressive” (115) whistle interrupts her from walking home her bovine companion and leaves her initially "horror-stricken" (115). Although Sylvia grew to have a “loving admiration” (118) for the hunter, “she would have liked him vastly better without his gun” (118) and “could not understand why he killed the very birds he seemed to like so much (118), a strong indication that her mind still prefers nature over man. Furthermore, her adoration for wildlife is spiked and completely showcased when “the great enterprise would really begin” (119). During her journey to climb to the top of the tallest tree, many similarities between Sylvia and birds are made, suggesting that she is one with the natural world: “bare feet and fingers, that pinched and held like bird’s claws” (119), “Sylvia felt as if she too could go flying away among the clouds” (119), “Sylvia’s face was like a pale star” (119). All those description liken her to the white heron and insinuate that her journey up the tree led her deeper into nature and integrated her into the life of an actual bird. Moreover, the sights from the top are describes as a, “wonderful sight” (119) and it is here where she finally sees the white heron.

            Sylvia’s attachment to the natural world is finally solidified by her not disclosing the heron’s location to the hunter: “she cannot tell the heron’s secret and give its life away” (120); she reaches the epiphany that the white heron and all of nature deserves to live. By keeping the heron’s “secret” Sylvia essentially chooses nature over the obscure wants of humanity. As a result, she forsakes the short human companionship she had with the hunter, and she chooses to remain a, “lonely country child” (120) in her forest niche.