The History Teacher Analysis
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
The History Teacher By Billy Collins And Outdistanced By Larry Rubin
335 Words | 2 PagesThe use of allusion in the two poems “The History Teacher by Billy Collins and “Outdistanced” by Larry Rubin punctuate the shared theme that that a willful lack of self-awareness can quickly lead to a greater ignorance of what could shape humanity. Throughout both poems, allusion is applied in order to create the theme that ignorance, due to a lack of self-awareness, can shape humanity. In Collins’ poem, a history teacher tries and fails to disseminate the misinformation that there is no violence in history in order to protect the innocence of his pupils. However, this severe lack of wisdom leads to the, “torment of the weak/ and the smart,” (lines 14-15) on the playground.
Billy Collins The History Teacher Analysis
298 Words | 2 PagesThe poem “The History Teacher” by Billy Collins has a greater lie than “The Death of Santa Claus”, in its intention to save the innocence of students. It is necessary to tell the truth when the lie is destroying students future and breeding ignorance. To begin, in this poem the history teacher is trying to protect the innocence of his students by simplifying most historic allusions to make them sound friendly and less important. For example Collins writes, “The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more than an outbreak of questions...” (Collins 7-8).
Creative Writing: Private Grayrock
2368 Words | 10 PagesThe kinsmen who had adopted the boys were enemies, holding no communication. For a time letters full of boyish bravado and boastful narratives of the new and larger experience--grotesque descriptions of their widening lives and the new worlds they had conquered--passed between them; but these gradually became less frequent, and with William 's removal to another and greater city ceased altogether. But ever through it all ran the song of the mocking-bird, and when the dreamer opened his eyes and stared through the vistas of the pine forest the cessation of its music first apprised him that he was awake. The sun was low and red in the west; the level rays projected from the trunk of each giant pine a wall of shadow traversing the golden haze to eastward until light and shade were blended in
I Know Why The Caged Bird Cannot Read Summary
807 Words | 4 PagesHer full use of strong language diminishes pieces of literature’s worth and questions their true significance. She claims this in a critical tone by stating, “Like most parents who have, against all odds, preserved a lively and still evolving passion for good books, I find myself, each September, increasingly appalled by the dismal lists of texts that my sons are doomed to waste a school year reading”(Prose, 176). She uses words like dismal to describe the book choices students would have to read according to the curriculum of the educational system. By using words like dismal, she expresses her feeling of disappointment towards the curriculum. She
Home For Peculiar Children Essay
685 Words | 3 PagesWe all believed the stories about monsters and ghosts that people told us when we were little. But what if those stories turned out to be true? When Jacob was little, his grandfather told him many stories about his life as a child living with the peculiar children and their headmistress, Miss Peregrine; however, as he grew older, and after his grandfather passed away, Jacob began to search for the truth behind those rather ludicrous tales his grandfather once told him about. Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children is a book that teaches a valuable lesson that is true even for a modern teen: be careful whom you trust because people can often be misleading. Though Jacobs’ grandfather did not lie about his life a child, he left out a lot of important information that would later cause a lot of trouble and lose Jacob’s trust towards him.
The Wide Window Daniel Handler Analysis
1153 Words | 5 PagesOften, as children and young adults, the world tries to inflict its own view and instill its own morals, which are often wrong and misleading. This is what Daniel Handler, as an author, has set out to try and fix through his writings. Throughout nearly all of his books, Handler tries to take genres, ideas, and material not normally thought of as being for children and young adults, and writes them for children and young adults. Yet inside of each book, particularly his A Series of Unfortunate Events series, he fills its pages to the brim with ironic quips that jab at the traditional things that children are taught. One of the quotes that best epitomizes his use of dark humor to get across his point is taken from the fourth book in the series,
Harwood's Use Of Figurative Blindness
168 Words | 1 PagesThe formulistic construction and simplistic language echo a child’s understanding of the world, enhanced by the synecdoche “beak and claw”. Harwood’s repeated references to literal and figurative blindness through “daylight riddled eyes”, are metaphoric of the child’s ignorance. The child belief of “death clean and final not this obscene” is left reeling, highlighted through alliteration and grotesque imagery “stuff that dropped and dribbled through loose straw tangling in bowels”.
Imagery In An Occurrence At Owl Creek
707 Words | 3 PagesAn 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. .
Cherry Bomb Maxine Clair Summary
432 Words | 2 PagesIn the excerpt from “Cherry Bomb” by Maxine Clair, the narrator makes use of diction, imagery and structure to characterize her naivety and innocent memories of her fifth-grade summer world. The diction employed throughout the passage signifies the narrator’s background and setting. The narrator’s choice of words illustrates how significant those memories were to her. Specific words help build the narrator’s Midwestern background with items like the locust, cattails and the Bible.
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”.
Figurative Language In The Scarlet Ibis
631 Words | 3 Pages“It was covered with a film of Paris green sprinkled to kill the rat, and the screech owls had built a nest inside it” (Hurst 353). The tone of the “Scarlet Ibis” is mournful and melancholy from start to finish about a boy who struggled through his life trying to be like his older brother. Through the use of figurative language, imagery, and symbolism James Hurst wove a tale that touched everyone's hearts.
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.
Literary Elements In A White Heron
622 Words | 3 PagesAdventure and desire are common qualities in humans and Sarah Orne Jewett’s excerpt from “A White Heron” is no different. The heroine, Sylvia, a “small and silly” girl, is determined to do whatever it takes to know what can be seen from the highest point near her home. Jewett uses literary elements such as diction, imagery, and narrative pace to dramatize this “gray-eyed child” on her remarkable adventure. Word choice and imagery are necessary elements to put the reader in the mind of Sylvia as she embarks on her treacherous climb to the top of the world. Jewett is picturesque when describing Sylvia’s journey to the tip of one unconquered pine tree.
An Analysis Of Louise Erdrich's I Was Sleeping Where The Black Oaks Move
796 Words | 4 Pages“I Was Sleeping Where the Black Oaks Move” written by Louise Erdrich focuses on a child and a grandfather horrifically observing a flood consuming their entire village and the surrounding trees, obliterating the nests of the herons that had lived there. In the future they remember back to the day when they started cleaning up after the flood, when they notice the herons without their habitat “dancing” in the sky. According to the poet’s biographical context, many of the poems the poet had wrote themselves were a metaphor. There could be many viable explanations and themes to this fascinating poem, and the main literary devices that constitute this poem are imagery, personification, and a metaphor.
My Teaching Philosophy Essay
1095 Words | 5 PagesTeaching philosophy is described by Sadker and Sadker as, “Behind every school and every teacher is a set of related beliefs - a philosophy of education – that influences what and how students are taught. A philosophy of education represents answers to questions about the purpose of schooling, a teacher’s role and what should be taught and by what methods.” (Teacher, Schools and Society. 2005). With this definition in consideration, my teaching philosophy is “I believe that children learn best when they are given the chance to choose, discuss and explore what they want to learn, when they want to learn and how they want to learn.
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