A White Heron

Study Guide

Literary Devices

Motifs

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Literary Devices Motifs

Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

The narrator personifies aspects of nature and anthropomorphizes animals repeatedly. The birds say goodnight to each other. The ocean has a great voice. The cow plays hide-and-seek. Conversely, Sylvia seems to blend in and become a part of nature several times. Even the name “Sylvia” comes from the Latin root silva for “forest.” When Sylvia climbs the massive tree, nature and Sylvia become one. Her bare feet and fingers pinch the branches “like bird’s claws,” and the tree scratches her back with “angry talons.” Later, when she is ready to tell the heron’s secret to the hunter, the pine’s branches “murmur” to her to remind her of her experience in the tree. Jewett uses personification and literary comparisons like metaphor and simile to blur the lines between nature and humanity. Sylvia, after all, is a human being, but she is also a part of the natural world. If she were to choose the love of a hunter over her love of the natural world, she likely wouldn’t feel so much a part of nature. Sylvia herself is like the white heron, innocent and majestic at the same time.