MORALITY

For this weeks blog post I wanted to discuss Sarah Jewett’s short story, A White Heron. In this story the main character Sylvia is faced with the tough decision of deciding between saving the Heron from the hunter, or letting the hunter shoot the bird. Even though the hunter offers Sylvia a large sum of money, Sylvia decided to keep the birds location a secret.  After reading this short story two questions came to mind: questions regarding morality, and the question what lengths should a person/ character go to, in order to help their family.

 A question often asked is: can it be considered moral for a man to steal a fish in order to protect his family? If Sylvia decided to tell the man about the Heron, she could have potentially helped her family out financially. “He can make them rich with money; he has promised it, and they are poor now” (p. 92). Even if it’s considered unethical by some to take the life of an animal, could it have been justified because, Sylvia would have helped her family financially? To me there is no concrete answer because; it is up to a person/character to figure out their moral code.  In this case Sylvia felt it would be against her moral code to allude to where the bird could be, but I’m sure many people would have taken the money.

 Another question regarding morality raised by this story is: what is the moral responsibility of a child? It is brought to reader’s attention that Sylvia is just nine years old. “Has she been nine years growing, and now, when the great world for the first time puts out a hand to her, must she thrust it aside for a birds sake?” (p. 92). This quote portrays that Sylvia is a young girl and that it is also the first time she is truly faced with a question or morality. Is her sense of morality coated with a layer of innocence, and that’s the reason she decides to save the birds life? This is a tough question but, I believe innocence does play a role in a child’s moral code because, quite simply they have not been exposed to ethical vs. unethical, as a more mature character has. It can be viewed that Sylvia being just nine years old, was playing off her emotion rather than her moral code. It is nature of children that they love everything, and regard friendship higher than money.

 Morality and moral codes are a controversial subject because; each character has their own internal value system, and thoughts on how to decipher between right and wrong.