What would live be if not for the choices? If everything was set exactly, there would be no point in living. Even it was just, I will go to school tomorrow, and I will come back home safe after another dreadful day, but it may be, I will die today, I will be on the flight, and it will crash, and I won’t make it. With choices you can change it. Maybe I’ll get sick tomorrow and I won’t go to school, or my mom will be diagnosed with cancer, so I stay with her. In The Hundredth Dove, Jane Yolen, shows us that choices will change our lives drastically. It is our choices that make us, us.
When Hugh the Fowler, was presented with the task of catching one hundred doves, he took it unhesitatingly because it was, and always had been his choice in life to “Servo”. It was with this undying servitude that he became the King’s fowler, but also how he killed his soul and motivation. He was bent on gathering all that was demanded of him, but it meant losing himself in the process. When he served, he chose to put the needs of other ahead of his own, and therefore made the choice to put them in front of himself.
When living for others, it is easy to lose yourself, and to lose your direction, is to be but a zombie, for there is nothing that is yours. Hugh when living for the King’s requests had no pleasure. He had duty, and the time between it, no pain or pleasure, but success and failure. When with the last dove, he was enduring his return to emotion. Inside he was forced to grapple with the concept of failure vs. compassion towards the dove, and in turn his master’s mistress.
What is life, but the course of our choices laid out in front of us, and our reactions to them. All that is certain in life is what you make certain. You choose whether something is or whether it isn’t. We must choose what we do and don’t do every day, and then live with it for the rest of our lives.
