A White Heron

As the protagonist, Sylvia experiences the most change. A nine-year-old, socially anxious, curious, and kindhearted girl, she feels crippling shyness with people, but at home with nature and animals. The narrator refers to her as a “brave […] solitary gray-eyed child” (677) who never felt “alive at all before she came to live at the farm” and doesn’t miss her “manufacturing town” (670), though she does reminisce about her siblings and parents. Sylvia befriends animals, showing empathy when she offers the birds and squirrels her food. She’s so caring toward animals that she even feels guilty for sitting on the hop-toad’s home at the doorstep of her grandmother’s farmhouse when she, her grandmother, and the hunter stay up talking under the rising moon.

Sylvia’s ideals of protecting nature and living in quiet isolation, as well as her core character trait of shyness, are challenged by the hunter’s arrival. She immediately feels “alarmed” by him and only manages to speak with “much effort” (671). Slowly, Sylvia grows able to communicate more freely with the hunter, feeling less stressed in his presence. Although she experiences a romantic crush on him, her childlike spirit and innocence are never compromised. At first, she considers making the hunter happy by revealing the location of the heron.