As a coming-of-age story, the mood of “A White Heron” shifts significantly from start to finish. First, the mood is lighthearted and joyful as Sylvia walks her cow home from getting lost in the woods. She starts the story an innocent child who enjoys the nature around her but doesn’t necessarily understand its importance.
The mood shifts when Sylvia meets the hunter and develops a crush on him, agreeing to help him try to find the heron so that he can kill and stuff it. Here the mood becomes more heated and suspenseful. This comes across in the narrator’s description of how Sylvia followed the hunter through the woods “fascinated, a few steps behind, with her gray eyes dark with excitement.”
The mood shifts again when Sylvia decides to climb to the top of the old pine tree alone in the early hours of the morning in order to locate the heron for the hunter. The mood shifts from suspenseful to awe-inspiring as Sylvia sees the natural world laid out before her and witnesses the majesty of the white heron.
After this experience, the mood shifts for a final time. Sylvia is no longer the innocent child she was at the beginning of the story—she now understands the importance of nature and has decided that she will protect it in the face of the hunter’s exploitative desires. The following passage captures this clearer and more collected mood:
[S]he remembers how the white heron came flying through the golden air and how they watched the sea and the morning together, and Sylvia cannot speak; she cannot tell the heron’s secret and give its life away.
Here Sylvia recalls her life-changing time at the top of the tree and uses it to fuel her decision-making—ultimately, she allies herself with nature rather than with a greedy man.
