The Death of Beauty

In Sarah Orne Jewett's "White Heron," Jewett uses the color white in a symbolic way for purity. The question becomes will the purity of youth unblemished conquer the symbolic greed associated with wealth? The sweet beauty of innocence is convey in the main character Sylvia. Sylvia lives with her grandmother in the woods. They are economically poor yet Sylvia is rich in integrity. A proven fact when a hunter comes to the woods in search of a White Heron. He tells Sylvia he will pay her ten dollars if she leads him to the bird. Although ten dollars was not a lot of money to the hunter it was to Sarah.

However there was something worth more than money to Sarah the beauty of the woods. The white heron was a part of the beauty of the woods. The hunter sought to kill the bird and display it some where. In the end Sarah sought to see the beauty of the life in the white heron.

How we sometimes disparately need the innocence beauty of Sylvia to flow through the heart and minds of people. Some people are too quick to kill and display beauty not realizing death can not capture beauty. To try to buy beauty kills it.

Stephen Cranes, poem "Do Not Weep, Maiden, for War is Kind" was thought provoking to me. The words war and kind being used in the same statement contrast to a point that they indeed fight with each other. "Little souls who thirst to fight. These men were born to drill and die." (Ll 7-8) I disagree with his words and perhaps that is what draws me more into his poem. Although the poem was written about the Civil War, it is applicable for today. As the mother of a son who has served two tours in Iraq, I do not believe soldiers thirst to fight. The thirst is in defending your country. Just as every person is born we shall all"surely die."

"A field were a thousand coorpses lie." (l. 11) How sad and terrible war is. Again Crane is usuing words to provoke thought. What reasoning could have been made to justify a war that leaves one thousand dead? He has created a war within the poem. His final casuality argument is, "Mother whose heart hung humble as a button On the bright splendid shroud of your son, Do not weep. War is kind. (Ll. 23-26) How can a mother not weep for the death of a child born of her flesh or not. The cry over spilled blood remains the same.

War is anything but kind.