The History Teacher By Billy Collins And Outdistanced By Larry Rubin

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The 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. These lines show how the children are in fact not innocent, and that

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