Similarities Between A Barred Owl And The History Teacher
An adult’s main priority regarding children is to not make them fearful of the unknown. In the two poems, “A Barred Owl” by Richard Wilbur and “The History Teacher” by Billy Collins, both speakers are adult that provide explanations for children. Through the use of literary devices, the speakers in the poems are able to express their different approaches while trying to protect the children’s innocence. In the poem “The History Teacher” by Billy Collins, the speaker is a teacher is trying to provide explanations to his students about historical events. While attempting to not scare the children with the real events in history, Collins uses sarcasm and a somewhat humorous tone throughout the poem to explain the historical context. An example …show more content…
The child in the poem is a girl as it says, “her darkened room” (Line 2) and “all she heard.” (Line 3) In the poem, an owl awakens the girl and scares her with the “owl’s voice” (Line 2) and the parent is trying to help the child continue sleeping. The child is fearful of the owl’s hooting, so the parent uses a phrase that sounds like the owl’s hooting, “Who cooks for you?” (Line 6) in order to try to make the girl’s fear disappear. This is in fact a personification because the parent is making it seem as if the owl asked that question, which in reality, owls aren’t able to talk. Furthermore the child’s innocence is present in this poem as the girl has no idea that the owl is not harmful at all, but she is will scared and that is the reason the parent tells the girl a white lie to help her go back to sleep. This poem is not harming the child’s knowledge and instead, it is trying to help the girl. In contrast, Collin’s poem makes the students ignorant by lying about the historical events. By using personification, Wilbur states, “Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear” (Line 7) and “thus domesticate a fear “(Line 8). These two lines in the poem make it seem as if words were able to make children fear as well as make them relieved, so the parent had to choose words
Similarities Between A Barred Owl And The History Teacher
478 Words | 2 PagesThe only similarity seen between poems “A Barred Owl”, by Richard Wilbur, and “The History Teacher”, by Billy Collins, is the subject of adults allocating explanations to children for the purpose of maintaining their innocence. Both poets approach this subject in very distinct ways; although both Wilbur and Collins depend on diction to convey their message, Wilbur utilizes his rhyme scheme, creating an almost fanciful tone, whereas Collins more heavily relies on irony in order to manifest his satirical tone. Wilbur’s simple rhyme scheme adds to the whole piece seeming more innocent and childlike. For instance, Wilbur writes “We tell the awakened child that all she heard / Was an odd question from a forest bird”. His rhyme scheme makes the poem seem more like a bedtime story, or a children’s book, which perfectly explains the theme of the poem,
Comparing The Poems 'A Barred Owl And The History Teacher'
534 Words | 3 PagesIn “The History Teacher” he describes his students going out to recesses. “The children would leave his classroom for the playground… mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses...and walked home passing flower beds and white picket fences.” Creating and using the senses for the audience that the bullies are scaring the children meaning they take their innocence away from them because it creates fear for the children who are playing. Also at the end of the poem he describes what is a group of soldiers sitting and knowing their enemies are doing the same. In “A Barred Owl” the poet also uses imagery to create an ambitious tone.
Green Eggs And Ham By Dr. Seuss
719 Words | 3 PagesDr. Seuss uses imagery and allegory to describe that you should keep an open mind about new experiences and never judge a book by it's cover. Throughout the story Sam and the character have an interesting friendship. In the story the main character compares the eggs to fear.
Guns-When Trump Can T Even Tweet, By Gail Collins
871 Words | 4 PagesSarcasm is the use of irony to mock or convey contempt. An author may use sarcasm in literature to add humor or cynicism or to add variety to their writing. Collins opens up her article with an immediate use of sarcasm in order to get the reader's attention. She states, “I don't know if you heard, but this week a boy with a handgun killed two of his fellow students at a high school in Kentucky”. Collins use of sarcasm is evident, seeing as it’s impossible not to hear about a new school shooting.
Similarities Between The Barred Owl And The History Teacher
895 Words | 4 PagesIn the poem “The Barred Owl”, Wilbur use rhyme, personification, and dark imagery
Similarities Between A Barred Owl And The History Teacher
870 Words | 4 PagesFrymire 1 George Frymire Dr. Degen Pre AP English 2 30 January 2015 The Influence of Words \ In Richard Wilbur’s “A Barred Owl” and Billy Collin’s “The History Teacher”, both authors use lies in order to tame the fears of young children; however, in “A Barred Owl”, the child assimilates the lie as truth. On the other hand, in “The History Teacher”, the students, incredulous of their prevaricating teacher, mock his spurious teachings. In the first stanza of “A Barred Owl”, the poem begins with a dark, ominous, “warping night air” sweeping into the child’s room, which “brought the boom, of an Owl’s voice into her darkened room.”
Situational Irony In 'The Ransom Of Redchief'
369 Words | 2 PagesSituational irony can affect people in many different ways. Surprise is an emotion that often comes with almost all situational irony, but there are many other emotions that are felt as well. In O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Redchief,” situational irony is used to produce humor. When an original plan completely backfires, and has an opposite effect than what should have happened, people usually feel pity but because of the mischievous characterization, the effect will be humorus. A similar result comes from
Human Condition In Gwen Harwood's Poems Father And Child
527 Words | 3 PagesShe 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”.
Billy Collins Schoolsville Analysis
742 Words | 3 PagesHe 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.
Summary Of The Unplanned Human Experiment
1058 Words | 5 PagesThe Unplanned Human Experiment “Too spicy,” said Elijah, the son of Dr. Steingraber, after trying a food that some believe to be a stereotypical child’s favorite. In Steingraber’s essay, “But I Am a Child Who Does”, she writes about her accidental “human experiment”. Her experiment consists of her two children, Faith and Elijah, having a very particular food preference. Their taste perception was based solely on direct experience and was not exposed to any manipulating advertisements. However, she does not address that advertisements are righteously wrong.
Concrete Mixers Figurative Language
529 Words | 3 PagesWhen reading Concrete Mixers by Patricia Hubbell, the author uses figurative language to get his ideas thrown out. On stanza four the poem reads, “Their trunks are raising a city.” The author demonstrates the use of personification by describing concrete mixers are similar to elephants. In the poem, the author pushes the idea of quality and representation as one can visualize their trunks are raising a city. Furthermore, the author uses similes throughout the poem.
Loss Of Innocence In 'The Flowers And Barbie-Q'
718 Words | 3 PagesThrough the Eyes of a Child There is a loss of innocence when a young child is exposed to societal truths. That being said, it is not uncommon for a child to feel a need for change in themselves when they are made aware of the flaws of the world as well as their own. This loss of innocence is found in the following short stories through a specific literary device. Although a wide array of elements is used in a work of literature, denotation is an assertive approach that puts more emphasis on the meaning.
Diction And Symbolism In Dudley Randall's Ballad Of Birmingham
932 Words | 4 PagesReflecting back on Sullivan’s insight, he declared that the poem “uses the ballad convention of the innocent questioner and the wiser respondent… but it changes the object of knowledge from fate to racial politics. The child is the conventional innocent, while the mother understand he violence of this political moment.” In addition, as the reader understands this push-pull of bravery and fear along with innocence
Comparing Yeats The Stolen Child And Cat's In The
314 Words | 2 PagesBoth Yeats ' poem alongside Harry and Sandy Chapin 's song highlight the negative aspects of reality and utilize the naïveté of children to reinforce it. In "The Stolen Child" 's refrain, the faeries tell the boy that "the world 's more full of weeping than" he can can comprehend. This is because he is a mere child who is mostly optimistic due to not being aware of his surroundings. The same goes for Chapin 's song Cat 's in the Cradle. During the refrain the boy asks his father when he 'll come home but the father replies "I don 't know when...".
Analysis Of Owls Do Cry
2217 Words | 9 PagesThese sections set themselves apart from others by their use of imagery: “... and I planted carrot seed that never came up, for the wind breathed a blow-away spell; the wind is warm, was warm, and the days above burst unheeded, explode their atoms of snow-black beanflower and white rose, mock the last intuitive who-dunnit, who-dunnit of the summer thrush...” (Frame 3). These passages serve to highlight how Daphne 's mind deviates from the norm. She has an unusually vivid imagination that seems almost childlike at times. The use of personification puts further emphasis on her childishness, but her overactive imagination is not always harmless and sometimes takes a darker turn, revealing fears that appear to be deeply
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