Near the beginning of “A White Heron,” as Sylvia pauses on her walk home with her cow, the narrator captures the nature around her using imagery:
The cow stopped long at the brook to drink, as if the pasture were not half a swamp, and Sylvia stood still and waited, letting her bare feet cool themselves in the shoal water, while the great twilight moths struck softly against her. She waded on through the brook as the cow moved away, and listened to the thrushes with a heart that beat fast with pleasure.
The imagery here is dense—Sylvia’s “bare feet cool themselves in the shoal water” while “twilight moths struck softly against her” and her heart “beat[s] fast with pleasure” while listening to the birds. The imagery here helps readers to feel external sensations like the water and the moths while also experiencing the inner sensation of Sylvia’s increased heart rate, all while hearing the birdcalls of the thrushes.
This highly sensory moment in nature prepares readers to understand the importance of nature to Sylvia—for example, while many people would be annoyed by moths hitting them, she experiences them as “softly” touching her. In showcasing how Sylvia is lovingly attuned to nature, Jewett is encouraging readers to orient themselves to nature in a similar way. It is her love of nature that ultimately leads her to protect it when she is presented with the hunter's attention and promise of payment.
When Sylvia is climbing up the old pine tree in order to locate the white heron, the narrator uses imagery to capture Sylvia’s experience, as seen in the following passage:
Small and silly Sylvia began with utmost bravery to mount to the top of [the tree], with tingling, eager blood coursing the channels of her whole frame, with her bare feet and fingers, that pinched and held like bird’s claws to the monstrous ladder reaching up, up, almost to the sky itself.
The language here is extremely sensory—Sylvia experiences her blood as “tingling,” “eager,” and “coursing the channels of her whole frame,” while her bare feet and fingers “pinched and held like bird’s claws” to the tree. This language inspires readers to truly feel the tree-climbing experience alongside Sylvia, encouraging them to feel both the excitement of the coursing blood as well as the pinching pain of her feet on the branches.
The metaphorical description of the tree as a “monstrous ladder reaching up, up, almost to the sky itself” is also notable, as it adds a visual element to the scene as well. Readers are able to experience the immensity of the tree as “small and silly” nine-year-old Sylvia does.
All of this figurative language combines to help readers understand the significance of this experience for Sylvia. While she has explored the woods before, her excitement and smallness in the face of this old and magnificent tree indicates that this experience is going to fundamentally change her, as soon proves to be true. Before the climb, she was an innocent child hoping to impress a man (the hunter), and, afterward, she is a wiser figure who understands the majesty of nature and the importance of protecting it from people like the hunter who want to control and exploit it for personal gain.
Once Sylvia has climbed in the top of the pine tree (the climax of the story), the narrator describes the scene using imagery and a pair of similes:
Sylvia’s face was like a pale star, if one had seen it from the ground, when the last thorny bough was past, and she stood trembling and tired but wholly triumphant, high in the tree-top. Yes, there was the sea with the dawning sun making a golden dazzle over it, and toward that glorious east flew two hawks with slow-moving pinions […] Their gray feathers were as soft as moths; they seemed only a little way from the tree, and Sylvia felt as if she too could go flying away among the clouds.
The similes here—Sylvia's face looking “like a pale star” and the feathers of the hawks appearing to be “as soft as moths”—help readers to fully experience this significant moment. This experience has changed Sylvia; she is not just a child in the treetops, but is now as powerful and luminous as a star. That Sylvia can sense the softness of the hawks’ feathers from afar also shows how her senses are heightened in this peak moment.
The other imagery here—that the sun had a “golden dazzle over it,” Sylvia “stood trembling,” and she “felt as if she too could go flying away among the clouds”—helps readers to understand the majesty of nature and the ways it can enliven humans. In a time in which many readers were likely caught up in the fast pace of cities and modern society, Jewett is encouraging them to slow down, like Sylvia does here, and fully experience the wonders of the natural world.
