Essay response to “The Hundredth Dove”

How would you look back on your life if you killed something important? In this story “the hundredth dove” by Jane Yolen a fowler named Hugh captures birds for the king to eat. He captures the small birds with a net that he made, but for the bigger birds Hugh uses a bow but doesn’t shoot. The birds just fall. Everything seems normal until Hugh does something tragic.

Hugh doesn’t normally get called to the king, but today he did. The king is getting married and wants the fowler to catch 100 doves. Thinking this is an easy task the fowler agrees. Hugh waited until night and threw his net. He caught twenty one doves but when he got up there were only 20. He did this multiple times and the same thing kept happening, until he had eighty doves. He went to catch more doves and the same thing happened but this time there were only 19. Finally he decided he would try to catch the one that was slipping away. He through his net then jumped on it. At last he had caught it. On his way back to his house the dove spoke to him. He was confused but just ignored it. The next day he brought the doves to the kings wedding but the bride did not show. It wasn’t till then that he realized that the dove he couldn’t catch was the king’s future wife.

The king did not suspect anything of the fowler. This draws me to the conclusion that the king has a ton of trust and respect in the fowler. Respect is very important to have especially when it is coming from the king. Hugh may have felt bad but he was just following his orders. How the fowler reacted to the situation made it seem like the author was trying to tell us to move on from our mistakes and not do what Hugh did.

After he realized the dove was the future wife of the king he pretty much went into solitary confinement. He never killed another bird and he sat in his house and did nothing. It was a bad thing to do but he followed the king’s orders. Hugh followed his orders but was it really the right thing to do? It is hard to do the right thing when it comes to following you king. This just goes to show how one wrong decision can make a huge impact on someone’s life.