SOURCE: “The Shape of Violence in Jewett's ‘A White Heron,’” Colby Library Quarterly, Vol. 22, No. 1, March, 1986, pp. 6–16.

In the essay below, Ammons discusses the myths, narrative form, and themes of the story.

Let us imagine that we live in a culture where time is a cycle, where the sand dollar lies beside its fossil (as it does). Where everything is seen to return, as the birds return to sight with the movement of the waves. As I return to the beach, again and again.

Imagine that in that returning nothing stands outside; the bird is not separate from the wave but both are part of the same rhythm. Imagine that I know—not with my intellect but in my body, my heart—that I do not stand separate from the sand dollar or the fossil; that the slow forces that shaped the life of one and preserved the...