Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“Were the birds better friends than their hunter might have been,—who can tell?”
- Source
- A White Heron
- Date
- 1886
Meaning of “Were the birds better friends than their hunter…”
Jewett closes Sylvia’s choice by leaving open what human companionship she may have sacrificed when she protected the heron and its woodland life.
Where does it come from?
“A White Heron,” represented in Project Gutenberg #74980. The narrator asks this after Sylvia refuses to reveal the heron’s nesting place to a likable young hunter; the question preserves the story’s tension between human attachment, loyalty to nature and irreversible choice.