A Barred Owl Vs. The History Teacher

869 Words4 Pages
20th Century America following World War II produced a society focused on the middle-class, increasingly suburban, which placed more importance on children (whose early stages were discovered to have tremendous impact on their adult formation). During this period, different forms of media displaced literature as entertainment; this caused many poets to reach out the general reader in an effort to conserve a following. Two such American poets, Richard Wilbur and Billy Collins, embraced these values into their writing, incorporating more familiar elements and subjects in order to connect with a wider audience. Yet, while both poets wrote of the similar subject of adults providing explanations to children, Wilbur and Collins provided highly contrasting viewpoints in their selection of detail, word choice and other literary devices. In “A Barred Owl,” Wilbur begins the poem by effectively setting a simple, juvenile and innocent mood as shown through his use of synecdoche and onomatopoeia such as “night-air” and “boom.” This mood is further revealed in his use of consonance, assonance, and a simple couplet rhymed scheme throughout the poem. The first two lines provide an introduction to a very simple problem, that of the owl frightening a child. Then, by using “We” in the third line, Wilbur is able to involve the reader into the poem, as well as possibly encompassing society as a whole. It is up to us, then, to provide a solution to this problem and “We” have decided that it is best to use a very innocent white lie about the nature of owls. The second stanza offers an introspective analysis of the specific personal account related in the first stanza. This shift is marked by the direct presentation of “Words” as the central subject. Explaining the reasons for the white lie, Wilbur uses the word “domesticate” to describe taming of the fear, a word with a
Open Document