Similarities Between The Barred Owl And The History Teacher

As a child, there are many things in life that your parents won’t tell you to keep your childhood sacred. The poems “The Barred Owl” by Richard Wilbur and “The History Teacher” by Billy Collins show the significance of parents sometimes telling white lies to their children from knowing the harsh truth about something. Both poets use literary devices to depit scenes where adults lie with the intention of protecting children. However, whereas Wilbur uses imagery, personification, and rhyme to show a fathers soothing lie to his daughter. Collins poem relies on numerous puns, understatement and irony to show the repercussions of sheltering children from the real world.

In the poem “The Barred Owl”, Wilbur use rhyme, personification, and dark imagery

From the title of the poem, there are many things you can conclude. When you think of a history teacher, usually you would think they are speaking of the past. In this case, Collins is keeping valuable information from his students to “protect his students’ innocence to hold them the Ice Age..” Collins uses humor to help the student look on the brighter sides of things. As a child when you are worried, or scared it is natural for you to ask multiple questions to gather as much information as possible. In the poem it reads, “spanish inquisition was nothing more/ than an outbreak of questions.” This is to show the reader that taking dark and scary moments, you are able to change the tone of them. This is an example of using humor. Collins uses understatements to water down the violent serving past. In the poem he says “ the enola gay dropped one tiny atom on japan.” This is an example of Collins using an understatement to make the past history less intense than actually talking about the bomb. Using the word bomb automatically makes you think of something scary and terrifying. Using different words, such as atom to describe the bomb is to make the situation seem less scary to the children. Throughout the poem he poet uses irony to shelter the children. In the poem Collins says, “The children would leave his