This was the best thrift of an old-fashioned farmstead, though on such a small scale that it seemed like a hermitage. The young man had known the horrors of its most primitive housekeeping, and the dreary squalor of that level of society which does not rebel at the companionship of hens. ![]() “It was a surprise to find so clean and comfortable a little dwelling in this New England wilderness. When the hunter sits down to dinner at Sylvia’s grandmother’s house, he thinks: This perspective stands in stark contrast to the hunter’s thoughts on the same setting, which Jewett reveals through a technique called “ free indirect discourse” in an earlier passage. As Sylvia’s thoughts on the tree suggest, she views her rural setting as a place of wondrous secrets, grandeur, and dignity. They can also help us to understand a character’s worldview through how they think about their surroundings. Settings not only help to clarify a given story’s themes. Thus what seems like a simple throwaway description of an old-growth tree in fact plays a central role in the understanding the significance of the decision that Sylvia must make later in the story, linking the individual story of a girl and a hunter with the larger history of that region of the United States. The heron’s feathers had, in the late nineteenth century, been used in hats for fashionable big-city ladies, and the bird had been hunted to near extinction as a result. And this scarcity extends to the dwindling white heron populations in the area. ![]() The other old-growth trees in the area had been removed long ago-presumably to support of the development of eastern cities like the one the hunter calls his home. By calling the old-growth pine-tree “the last of its generation,” Jewett depicts rural Maine as a site of resource extraction-in this case, timber extraction. After she climbs the tree, Sylvia spots the heron’s hidden nest, which propels the plot forward to its climactic question-will she reveal the bird’s location to the hunter or not.īut the description of the tree also EXPANDS this individual story of a young girl and a hunter into the story of a more general theme of a tension between rural and urban areas in the United States. Earlier in the story, Sylvia met a hunter from a big city who has traveled to this region to shoot a heron for his taxidermy collection, and he’s offered the girl a large sum of money to help him to find one. Now, this conveniently placed tree obviously serves to advance the story’s plot. But the stately head of this old pine towered above them all and made a landmark for sea and shore miles and miles away. Whether it was left for a boundary mark, or for what reason, no one could say the woodchoppers who had felled its mates were dead and gone long ago, and a whole forest of sturdy trees, pines and oaks and maples, had grown again. “Half a mile from home, at the farther edge of the woods, where the land was highest, a great pine-tree stood, the last of its generation. About halfway through the story, the protagonist, Sylvia, climbs a tall tree to look for a heron’s nest. Sarah Orne Jewett’s 1886 story “The White Heron” is set in rural Maine, and Jewett’s description of the setting helps us to clarify the its central conflict. Paying attention to setting-what it is and how it is described-can therefore bring us closer to the central themes, ideas, and conflicts of the stories we love. ![]() And just as we are molded by the strange 21 st century time in which we live, characters in fiction are molded by their own strange historical moments, which influence what they think, how they speak, and how they act. ![]() Just as we are shaped by the city, region, and country that surrounds us, characters in fiction are shaped by their own geographical circumstances. Conference for Antiracist Teaching, Language and AssessmentĪs this difference suggests, setting is much more than a mere backdrop for human action.Fall 2023 Undergraduate Course Descriptions.Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies (MAIS).Scientific, Technical, and Professional Communication Certificate.
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