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A Barred Owl And The History Teacher Essay

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In the poems “A Barred Owl” by Richard Wilbur and “The History Teacher” by Billy Collins, both poets portray how different explanations to children pan out. Both poems describe the speaker being dishonest to one or multiple students, however, one is more of a little white lie while the other is a lie on a much bigger scale. The first poem utilizes personification and humor to coax a child back to sleep by easing her fears. The second poem applies homonyms and hyperbole to maintain the innocence of a room full of students. Through the use of these different literary techniques, the poets are able to express how the adults provide an explanation for children. The imagery of the first poem greatly contrasts from the overall tone. In “A Barred Owl,” Richard Wilbur describes an owl frightening a child and waking her from her slumber. Wilbur sets the scene with dark imagery: “The warping night air brought the boom/ Of an owl’s voice into her darkened …show more content…

In this scenario, contradicting to the previous poem, lying is very wrong. If the speaker is a teacher he should not be instilling false information in his students. The tone of the poem is third person limited omniscient. Through this we are able to see the reasoning behind why the speaker would give students false facts. The speaker employs hyperbole to over-exaggerate history facts: “He told them the Ice Age was really just the Chilly Age, a period of a million years when everyone had to wear sweaters.” In the last stanza the teacher puts to action homonyms: “Wondering if they would believe that soldiers/ in the Boer War told long, rambling stories/ designed to make the enemy nod off.” Here he is turning boer in bore as in boring. He turns the whole thing into a joke which in this case is not appropriate considering his

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In Wilbur’s poem, the presence of pure intent and innocence was there, no doubt. However, when analyzing Collins’, it’s obvious that his objective was not quite to protect innocence of children, because the history teacher did not withhold information to protect them from anything. Collins first stanza captures the satire present when he introduces the notion that the teacher is only “trying to protect the students’ innocence.” Collins writes “he told them the Ice Age was really just / the Chilly Age, a period of a million years / when everyone had to wear sweaters.”.

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In both poems, the adults avoid disclosing the actual truth to the children in order to protect their innocence. Both poems use devices that emphasize simplicity in order to make the message suitable for a child. “A Barred Owl” utilizes a ten syllable masculine rhyme, making the poem sound like a nursery rhyme while also emphasizing simple words like “boom” and “room”. The simple devices and sounds in which Wilbur employs, allows for the somewhat frightening existence of an owl to become diluted to a reality suitable for a child’s understanding. “The History Teacher” utilizes understatements like the “tiny atom” referring to the atomic bomb and “a series of questions” referring to the Spanish inquisition.

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The speaker surfaces to reality in the last stanza when he speaks of how he spends his days now. The student who “knocks on the door with a term paper fifteen years late or a question about Yeats or double-spacing,” is not a procrastinating student, but a student who comes by to visit his former teacher. However, the student who “will appear in a window pane,” is really just watching him. Although this poem seemed to be just for humor, the reader could tell how delusional the speaker is when he shares that he is caught “lecturing the wall paper, quizzing the chandelier, and reprimanding the air,” (Collins 535). The teacher is still living in his teaching ways and has imagined a fantasy town with true descriptions of former

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