Barred Owl And A History Teacher Poems

Adults naturally seek ways of protecting their children from harm, but overprotectiveness often backfires. Children who do not learn the truth about the world from a trusted adult may grow up ignorant or lacking the psychological resilience to face life’s challenges successfully. Both Richard Wilbur and Billy Collins write about different ways adults overly protect their children. Although their poets use different poetic devices, motifs, and symbols, both of these poems share a common theme showing that children do best when they learn how to confront their fears, not run from them.
Although Wilbur and Collins use different poetic devices, the poets both achieve their goal of decrying overprotective adults. Wilbur uses an AABBCCDD rhyme scheme in “A Barred Owl,” which makes the poem read remarkably like a childhood nursery rhyme that perfectly parallels the eerie subject. On the other hand, Collins employs a free verse style, which makes more sense given that the children he depicts are likely to be older than the little girl in “A Barred Owl,” based on the gamut of world history topics mentioned in the poem. Whereas the parents of the little girl in “A Barred Owl” simply make up a nursery rhyme-type tale that anthropomorphizes the owl, the history teacher takes lying to a whole new and much less ethical level. As a teacher, it is his responsibility to convey the facts and not pretend that the Enola Gay “dropped one tiny atom on Japan,” (line 12). The teacher does not want the children to hear about blood, violence, and terror, but unfortunately the history of the world cannot be truthfully told without the gory details.
Wilbur and Collins use different motifs to symbolize fear. In Wilbur’s “A Barred Owl,” the title animal symbolizes the terrors of the night and the fears of the unknown. When their daughter awakens from hearing the sound of the barred owl, the parents assuage her fears by telling the young child the owl’s hoot meant it was merely asking, “Who cooks for you?” The owl is not a creature that would harm a little girl; it is simply a nocturnal predator. The parents unnecessarily bar their little girl from the truth about nature. Collins capitalizes on multiple historical narratives to show how the history teacher twists the truth. The overall motif is that of school: the place where students are supposed to learn objective facts and knowledge devoid from the biases that might be passed down by their parents. When school teachers fail to do their job, they breed a generation of ignorant, arrogant people who perpetuate the errors of history.
The repercussions of overprotection are framed differently in these two poems. Wilbur suggests that children who are shielded from the realities of nature will be “not listening for the sound of stealthy flight,” (line 10). Not paying attention to actual threats causes many people to be a victim of crime. In Collins’s “The History Teacher,” the repercussions of being sheltered have global implications. As a result of their ignorance, the students in “The History Teacher” turn out to be aggressive school bullies. The teacher remains oblivious to the repercussions of his actions. Collins suggests that history repeats itself when people remain blissfully ignorant. By shielding the students from the violence in history, the history teacher facilitates or enables the children’s own violent behavior in the schoolyard.
Ironically, both “A Barred Owl” and “The History Teacher” are poems that are frightening in their own ways, evoking a different type of fear than the ones the adults are trying to shield the children from. Both are warnings against overprotectiveness. For example, Collins’s poem implies that a country filled with ignorant bullies is a country that votes for Donald Trump. Wilbur’s poem shows how a child who is taught to block out genuine warning signs might tune out her senses altogether, causing her to be unable to protect herself. Using symbolism and imagery, Collins and Wilbur urge readers to confront their own fears and to teach children to do the same.



Works Cited

Collins, Billy. “The History Teacher.”
Wilbur, Richard. “A Barred Owl.”