Comparing Poems 'A Barred Owl And The History Teacher'

How Lying can be Both Good and Bad
The poems “A Barred Owl” and “The History Teacher” by Richard Wilbur and Billy Collins respectively, depict two different scenarios in which an adult deceives a child/children, which ranges from the sounds of a bird at night, to the history of the world itself. “A Barred Owl” depicts two parents who lie to their daughter about an owl who woke her in the night, while “The History Teacher” involves a man who tries to protect his students by using education as a tool to deceive them. Both poets use diction, imagery, and rhyme to help them convey a certain tone in their poems.
In “A Barred Owl”, Wilbur uses certain words and phrases to convey a dark, then humorous tone in the first stanza, then transitions

back in the second stanza. The poem begins with a “warping night air” that brings the “boom of an owl’s voice” into a little girl’s bedroom. The parents respond to her fear by telling her that the owl is only asking “an odd question…” (4). They say that if she “rightly listened” to the owl, she would be able to hear it merely asking “who cooks for you?” (6). The stanza expresses a humorous tone with phrases such as “[It] was an odd question from a forest bird…” (4), and “Who cooks for you?” (6). On one level, the parents comfort the child by telling a lie in order to get her back to sleep, on another level, this changes the perception the daughter has of the owl. The parents do this by using the term “forest bird”, instead of “owl” to make her feel less intimidated. Through this lie, she perceives the owl as a friendly forest creature, rather than a horrid monster of the night. The poem’s “AABBCC” rhyme scheme also helped further establish the tone, giving a child-like feeling to it, because it’s often used in fairy tales which is meant for children. Wilbur believes that the lie is a good way to help the child go to sleep. He justifies it in the second stanza, by mentioning that “Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear, can also thus domesticate a fear.”(7-8). Then he goes on to tell us what could have happened if the parents had lied to their daughter. He provides a stark contrast between the innocence of the owl in the first stanza, and the much darker nature of it in the second stanza. She would be “listening for the sound of stealthily flight, or dreaming of some small thing in a claw borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.” (11-12). This was likely put at the end of the poem to give the reader a lingering image of what could have happened. It allows the reader to understand how the girl would feel if her parents told her this instead. This would have traumatized the child and would become engraved into her memories, thus making it more appealing for the parents to lie to their daughter, rather than tell the truth.
Collins uses the same techniques to convey tone as Wilbur in “The History Teacher”, but to a different effect.

With the use of irony and a free rhyme scheme, Collins’ poem vocalizes his opinion on how lying to children about significant facts can only serve to make them ignorant. The way he communicates this to us is by ironically emphasizing events by understating them. He shows how important an event is by mocking the teacher’s portrayal of the event. One example of how he does this is how the teacher tells his students that the ice age was just the “chilly age, a period of a million years when everyone had to wear sweaters.”(3-4). Collins does this several times with other important events in history, such as the Spanish Inquisition, where “[It] was nothing more than an outbreak of questions.”(7-8). The teacher’s interpretation of events, when compared to the actual events themselves creates a sense of unease, as the lies stray far away from what actually happened, and brings up the question of whether or not these lies should be told. Collins uses events that involve death and destruction to accentuate how big the contrast between the teacher’s explanation and reality is. After the class ends, the children leave the classroom to “torment the weak and the smart” (15-16), while the teacher is oblivious to it all. Note that Collins puts “and the smart” (16) on a separate line from “torment the weak” (15). The children in the class aren’t smart because they did not learn about the true events in history. This distinction emphasized the ignorance of the children. This contrasts with Wilbur’s poem, as the lie told there served to soothe a child’s fear, rather than breed ignorance. The rhyme scheme is different as well. Collins’ free rhyme scheme is used to create a sense of unease, whereas Wilbur’s rhyme scheme creates a child-like feeling to his poem. Unlike the parents in “A Barred Owl”, the teacher is portrayed as an ignorant man, unaware of what happens around

him. Collins’ description of the children tormenting others while the teacher “walked home past flower beds and white picket fences”(19) shows a contrast between the two, implying that both of them are in worlds of their own and that the teacher sincerely believes that he is protecting the children’s innocence.
While Wilbur used a humorous tone, and simple rhyme scheme, Collin’s utilized irony and a free rhyme scheme to establish their outlook on the topic. Wilbur’s poem is about seeing how a lie can comfort a child shield them from the terrors of the darkness, and that differs greatly from Collins’ poem, which believes that the idea of “innocence” should not be an excuse to misinform children about significant and relevant truths about the world. This would only cause them to have a skewed sense of reality and allow for history to repeat itself again.