The White Heron Literary Analysis

Being the keeper of a secret is an important job for humans. Secrets, while they can be destructive, are also a blessing. Someone who is trusted with a secret suddenly feels a sense of responsibility and importance. In the “A White Heron” by Sarah Orne Jewett, the little girl named Sylvia discovers a beautiful white heron in the woods. The story, which is told from a third person omniscient point of view, provides an intimate reading experience that puts the reader into the story with Sylvia. The beautiful imagery provided further enhances the intimacy of the story and provides a haunting setting for the story to unfold. The discovery of the heron by Sylvia is important to the story as it gives Sylvia a sense of importance and drives the central

Flannery O’Connor’s The King of the Birds is a narrative explaining the narrator’s obsession with different kinds of fowl over time. The reader follows the narrator from her first experience with a chicken, which caught the attention of reporters due to its ability to walk both backward and forward, to her collection of peahens and peacocks. At the mere age of five, the narrator’s chicken was featured in the news and from that moment she began to build her family of fowl. The expansive collection began with chickens, but soon the narrator found a breed of bird that was even more intriguing; peacocks.

Main Character and Point of View Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan is told in 3rd person limited. The narrator tells the reader what the main character, Esperanza is thinking and feeling. “Esperanza felt that sinking feeling again. ”(p.74)

In his pom entitled “Evening Hawk”, Robert Penn Warren characterizes human nature by a transition between the flight of the hawk during the day and that of the bat, or the “Evening Hawk” during the night. The hawk, as it soars in daylight, portrays how humans appear in clear light of their peers, while the bat, cruising the night sky, symbolizes what humans hide within themselves. Warren effectively expresses the meaning of this poem and its serious mood by the use of diction and imagery to appeal to the reader’s perception of sight and sound. Throughout the first part of the poem, Warren describes the journey of the hawk in the daytime to symbolize how one’s character may seem to other beings.

In the auto-biographical excerpt from Ornithological Biographies by John James Audubon, he depicts his intriguing encounter with the wild pigeons of Ohio, while in Annie Dillard's engaging excerpt from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she illustrates her thought-provoking observation of the Starling roost migration. Both writers had an overriding passion that showed through in the diction, tone, and syntax of their pieces. Because of these different infatuations both authors use different literary devices that match their feelings of how they view the birds and how the birds affected them. The authors were very different in their tonality of the excerpts, as in how Audubon was a scientist studying the life of birds, but Dillard had a passion for the arts. Therefore both writers had a very different style of writing.

The hopes of Wes, Mary, and many others can be depicted through the sight of their new neighborhood in which “flowerpots were filled with geraniums or black-eyed Susans, and floral wreaths hung from each wooden door” (Moore 56). Not only does this use imagery to describe the beauty of Dundee Village, but the metaphoric aspect contributes to the message that Moore is trying to

Can you ever imagine a world of unaccepting individuals, constant fight, and the loathe differences and disabilities? Could you imagine a world where no one could get along? Unfortunately, we as a clique and community are reaching nearing such a world. Adversely but sadly true, some communities and countries have already begun to discriminate against young adolescents and adults with special needs, or different views, turning into a constant fight for survival. James Hurst's short story, The Scarlet Ibis and Ray Bradbury's, A Golden Kite, The Silver Wind, Hurst and Bradbury discuss themes of allegory, rivalry, vanity and pride through characters in both stories, The narrator of The Scarlet Ibis and The Mandarin of The Golden Kite, A Silver

When reading a novel, readers do not often realize that many authors use the same types of characters and symbols. Applying a literary lens to a novels can help readers better understand why a novel was written. A literary theory is, “A term for analyzing, classifying, defining, interpreting, and evaluating literature” (Davidson). When observing a piece of literature with an Archetypal lens analysts can identify these patterns. According to Literary Devices, “In literature, an archetype is a typical character, an action, or a situation that seems to represent universal patterns of human nature” (literarydevices). In the novel In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez, the Archetypal Theory can be applied to characters and symbols in the

In Alice Munro’s story “Wild Swans”, Rose is imagining things that may confuse people into thinking that she is being sexually harassed. Rose is a young girl who rides on a train for the first time and is seated next to an old man. She feels the old man 's hand on her leg in a disrespectful manner but it is all in her head. It is proven that Rose was only imagining the old man’s hand on her leg in a sexual manner in the since of: her own desire of wanting pleasure, the old man 's kindness and age shows that he is blameless, and lastly pressure shows that what she was feeling was a ten dollar in her pocket not a hand.

There was no chattering or chirping of birds; no growling of bears and no chuckling of contented otters; instead, the clearing lay desolate and still, as though it never wished to be turned into day. The only occupants were rodents and spiders who had set their home in the dank, forgotten shack. From its base, dead, brown grass reached out, all the way to the edge of the tree-line, unable to survive in the perished, infertile soil that made up the foundations of the house. Bird houses and feeders swung still from the once growing apple trees, in the back garden, consigned to a life of

Mary Oliver’s poem “Crossing the Swamp” shows three different stages in the speaker's life, and uses personification, imagery and metaphor to show how their relationship with the swamp changed overtime. The swamp is personified, and imagery is used to show how frightening the swamp appears before transitioning to the struggle through the swamp and ending with the speaker feeling a sense of renewal after making it so far into the swamp. Finally, metaphor is used to compare the speaker, who has experienced many difficulties to an old tree who has finally begun to grow. Mary Oliver uses the literary element of personification to illustrate the speaker and the swamp’s relationship. She portrays the swamp as alive in lines 4-8 “ the nugget of dense sap, branching/ vines, the dark burred/ faintly belching/ bogs.”

The speaker, instead of describing the swamp as dark and seamless, describes the swamp as “glittered” and “rich”. The abundance of life juxtaposes the previous image of scarcity in the swamp. At this point, the speaker is absent and the poem only focuses on the image of the swamp. This absence suggests that the speaker became part of the beautiful swamp. The vivid imagery of “fat grassy mires” and “succulent marrows” give the swamp a life-giving quality.

“Waxen Wings” Literary Analysis All her life, Birdie experiences failure. However, the only thing that she takes away from the experience is success. So, whether this is a tragedy or not, Birdie only sees it as a chance to be triumphant. In Ha Songnan’s “Waxen Wings”, the character Birdie grows up wanting to fly and the ways that she attempts to achieve this goal shapes her into the person that she will become. Songnan uses a sequential structure in order to take the reader through the highs and lows of Birdies’ life.

In the two poems Sympathy by Paul Laurence Dunbar and Caged Bird by Maya Angelou, gave a comparison between the life of a caged bird and the life of a slave. There are similarities and differences in the two poems. The difference between the two poem is that Sympathy is more aggressive than the poem Caged Bird, and the similarities of the two poems is the theme and imagery.

Summer Won’t Last Forever In “Summer of the Ladybirds” by Vivian Smith, the poet uses assonance, figurative language, and alliteration to convey that humans hold on to what is not permanent. First, assonance is used when the poet describes the ladybirds as “creatures from the world of leaf and flower.” The usage of the “ea” sounds emphasizes and draws attention to the ladybirds being from a different world from humans, one of “leaf and flower.” The main point that this phrasing gives prominence to is that leaves and flowers are much more perishable than other products of nature, such as humans.