District Assessment

Hidden Identity

Author’s Note: Here is my Spring District Assessment I am not very confident on this piece and frankly I don't think it is very good. I just have to let you know that my T key doesn’t work very well so there might be some words missing T’s I tried to find them the best I could, but I don’t know if it worked. Another thing, this piece sounds very self-righteous, like I am pointing out all of the things that people do and I don’t, I wasn’t trying to do that because I am guilty of every one of the things mentioned in there.

Floating through our lives we glide with ease, the things that we love surround us, food, celebrities TV. We are held captive by them; we are entranced like servants to an evil king. When salvation comes knocking at our door we want it, but our loyalty lies with something else. In the short story The Hundredth Dove by Jane Yolen the master fowler represents us, under the control of Satan, and when the dove or the Holy Spirit tries to get him to come to God the man cannot give up the life style he has even for salvation.

The dove is Lady Columbia, and that is why there ended up being no wedding, but she also represents the Holy Spirit, and the King represents Satan. “Lady Columbia gasped, ‘please do not serve them sire.’ But the king said to the fowler, ‘I have spoken. Do not fail me, fowler’”. The king will not listen to Lady Columbia, he hears her but goes ahead with what he wants any way, this is similar to how Luther who later was turned into Satan did not listen to God and did his own thing anyway.  In the end where there is no wedding because Lady Columbia is dead, that is like when Satan came to Earth, he caused a break in ties with God/The Holy Spirit and Adam and Eve that was later repaired by Jesus. If the king represents Satan, and Lady Columbia/ the dove then the fowler is indefinitely us

The fowler is so like we are today, he is wrapped up in the world around him, in things that he wants; he doesn’t notice that he could have chance at something better, and even when he does he cannot give up what he has. “After the king, I serve the forest” We all have idols whom we try to be like because they are “cool”, but really we are there servants. By buying their make-up, music, clothes whatever it may be and trying to be like them we are giving all of our time energy, and money towards them. Our time goes into them and our lives fill up with them although we know close to nothing about who they really are, but the fowler is offered a chance at something and he turns it down. Just as many other people would and have; he turns away God for something fake that only lasts for so long. In that sense we serve Satan when we obsess over people like Justin Bieber because it causes us to turn away from God, and that is Satan’s goal.

The white dove in the end of the story takes on three identities, the first as a white dove, the second as Lady Columbia, and the third as the Holy Spirit. “The next day the fowler brought the hundred doves—the ninety nine live ones and the one dead – to the king’s kitchen. But there never was a wedding.” This almost outright declares that that Lady Columbia was that white dove because she does not want doves to be served at the wedding because then she would basically be a cannibal, there is no wedding because she is dead and her name means dove so really how much more obvious can it get. Her third identity as the Holy Ghost is not so clear but clear enough. She lives amongst humans, and that is exactly the way the Holy Ghost is, living among us and inside of us.  “Master fowler free this dove, the queen will be your true love.” When the dove says this it is like saying that if you except God you will know love because in first John 4:8 states, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” 

The characters in this story represent someone else. The fowler is us, the king is Satan, and Lady Columbia or the Dove is the Holy Spirit. Each scenario also represents aspects of modern life, and the personal path everybody walks. The story is an analogy of what we do today, idolize and love those that are mere icons with no real depth, refusing the life that we could have because the one we already have seems so much better, and “easier”.