"Tiempos Amargos" (Bitter Times), with its ironic lamentation on the passage of time, criticizes life under the exploitive Mexican president Porfirio Diaz:
These are no longer the times of Porfirio (D'az), when they cried for the master when they'd meet him, they'd shake his hand, and button his pants.
If one day the steward became angry with a worker it was because there was another one closer to the snaps of his pants.
If someone had pretty daughters he'd get a job as a night watchman, or else he'd land a good job, at least as a payroll clerk.
If someone had a pretty wife they didn't let him rest, they'd get them up very early to work just like the oxen.
El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez" tells the tale of a Mexican outlaw who refuses to give up, even when he is cornered at the very end:
And in the county of Kiansis
They cornered him after all;
Though they were more than three hundred
He leaped out of their corral.
Then the Major Sheriff said,
As if he was going to cry,
Cortez, hand over your weapons;
We want to take you alive."
But when she gets back to her grandmother's house, and finds the young hunter and her grandmother waiting at the door, and questioning her, and when that "...splendid moment has come to speak of the dead hemlock tree" and the treasure it holds, she "...does not speak after all, though the old grandmother fretfully rebukes her." This man can make them "rich" with his ten-dollar reward, and they are
He doesn't know how to enjoy the heron the way Sylvia does, and all he can think of to do with it is to kill it and stuff it -- to bend it to his will and make it something pretty for display, and a testament to his own prowess and skill. This is indicative of the way he treats the world, as his greeting of Sylvia's grandmother on
The hunter is kind to her but is not considerate of her feelings and is only thinking of his own desire to find the heron. He tries to use the appeal of money to achieve his purpose as he knows that both Sylvia and her grandmother would find it very useful and Sylvia thinks that "no amount of thought that night could decide how many wished-for treasures the ten
Sylvia develops a fondness for "The Stranger" as she spends more time with him, traveling through the bushes trying to find the elusive bird. "The Stranger" has offered $10 to Sylvia if she could give him any information regarding the whereabouts of the White Heron. Sylvia develops a great desire to please this new friend of hers, and concocts a secret plan, involving a tall pine tree, to locate the
The Effect of Point of View in Literature How does point of view determine a story’s effect? “A White Heron” by Sarah Orne Jewett is told in the third person narration style, but the point of view that the narrator adopts is Sylvia’s—the little girl who feels connected with nature and enjoys the beauty, peace and harmony that she experiences in the outdoors. Her perspective allows the author to depict the
Female Freedom The short stories "The White Heron" by Sarah Orne Jewett and "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin focus on strong and sensitive heroines who seek to forge some sort of path of autonomy in a world of men. It is without question that men control the worlds that these characters find themselves in, and each protagonist struggles to find some sort of autonomy within those worlds. Both
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