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The History Teacher Analysis

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In “A Barred Owl” by Richard Wilbur and “The History Teacher” by Billy Collins, both poets use literary techniques such as imagery, euphemisms, and irony to uniquely exemplify both the positive and negative results of efforts made by adults to protect and preserve the innocence of children. Wilbur’s “A Barred Owl” describes a young girl who awakens one night to the sound of an owl calling, however, her parents quickly mislead her to believe that the owl is simply asking them silly questions, in order to disguise the fact that the owl is actually about to hunt down its prey. Wilbur develops this message powerfully through the incorporation of imagery that not only sets forth the setting of the poem but also graphically illustrates the thought …show more content…

By referring to the Ice Age as the Chilly Age, “a period of a million years when everyone had to wear sweaters,” the War of Roses taking place in a garden, and the Enola Gay as “dropping one tiny atom on Japan,” Collins use of euphemisms demonstrates the great lengths that adults will go to preserve the innocence of children, such as the parents in Wilbur’s “A Barred Owl.” However, the poet quickly portrays this negatively through the use of ironic imagery to show the history teachers’ students “leave his classroom for the playground to torment the weak and the smart.” Ironically, the teachers’ efforts to keep his students from becoming jaded actually make them ignorant and oblivious to the fact that they falsely think they know everything they have been taught. They then torment those portrayed as “weak” who know the actualities of the events. Unlike “A Barred Owl” Collins shows a negative aspect of shielding the truth from children. Wilbur exhibits a helpful side to the situation, in which parents coax a child back to sleep by hiding certain facts that would keep her up at night, however, Collin’s shows how quickly this can turn for the worse when done too often, as portrayed by the history teacher’s repeated attempts to protect the innocence of his students from historic events, while actually making them

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An Occurrence at Owl Creek is a prime example of the power of imagery. A story about the hanging of a man who supported the Confederate cause during the Civil War and acted against the North leading to his immediate execution. This story effectively uses imagery with consistency, appealing to all senses and types of imagery, Visual imagery pertains to the sense of sight, tactile to touch, olfactory to smell, aural to sounds, and gustatory to taste. The utilization of descriptive words, relatable situations, or physical feelings allows this story to formulate an undeniable image with palpable feelings, sights and sounds. .

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She utilises a diptych structure which portrays the contrast of a child’s naive image of death to the more mature understanding they obtain as they transition into adulthood. This highlighted in ‘I Barn Owl’ where the use of emotive language, “I watched, afraid/ …, a lonely child who believed death clean/ and final, not this obscene”, emphasises the confronting nature of death for a child which is further accentuated through the use of enjambment which conveys the narrator’s distress. In contrast, ‘II Nightfall’, the symbolism of life as a “marvellous journey” that comes to an end when “night and day are one” reflects the narrator’s more refined and mature understanding of mortality. Furthermore the reference to the “child once quick/to mischief, grown to learn/what sorrows,… /no words, no tears can mend” reaffirms the change in the narrator’s perspective on death through the contrast of a quality associated with innocence, “mischief”, with more negative emotions associated with adulthood, “sorrows”.

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He could imagine his deception of this town “nestled in a paper landscape,” (Collins 534). This image of the speaker shows the first sign of his delusional ideas of the people in his town. Collins create a connection between the speaker’s teacher teaching life and retired life in lines five and six of the poem. These connections are “ chalk dust flurrying down in winter, nights dark as a blackboard,” which compares images that the readers can picture.

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