In the poems "The History Teacher" by Billy Collins and "A Barred Owl" by Richard Wilbur adults explanations for kids. Both authors capture how a child's innocence is maintained.Both poems also contain several differences and similarities. The authors use a variety of literary devices in order to convey its point. The poem "A Barred Owl" by Richard Wilbur, the point the poet is making is that the child is afraid of the owl. The abstract idea of the poem is fear as showed in the first line " The warping night air. darkened room. The noise from the owl woke him/her up causing the kid to be afraid. One literary device is rhyme. The poet uses rhyme scheme of AABBCCDDEEFF. The first two lines are rhyming couplets which help make a soothing tone in order to eaze the explanation the parents give to calm down the child's fear. Another literary technique is anthropomorphism in the line "who cooks for you?" and then "who cooks for you?". This dialogue is coming from the parents who turned the noise the owl makes into words to tell the child that the owl is just looking for food.That line is also repetition because the owl doesnt only make the noise once it makes it constantly. Imagery is also used in the last two lines "Or dreaming. eaten raw." Its an image of the owl catching its prey and finally eating it. The concrete idea is you can calm down the child by using relatable language. The theme is "Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear, Can also thus domesticate a fear," this means that the thing that brings you to one extreme can also lead you down from it. .
In the poem " The History Teacher" by Billy Collin's point is to find a way to tell the kids about violent times in history without hurting their "innocence". So he finds a way to tell them by lying to them. One literary device used in most of the poem is metaphors, in order to compare history to irrelevant events. For example, in the line "he told them.
