Confronting Fear in Wilbur's and Collins's Poetry
This essay compares Richard Wilbur's "A Barred Owl" and Billy Collins's "The History Teacher" to argue that both poems share a common theme: children fare better when they learn to confront their fears rather than avoid them. The paper examines how each poet employs distinct poetic devices—Wilbur's nursery-rhyme-like AABBCCDD rhyme scheme versus Collins's free verse—as well as differing motifs and symbols, yet arrives at the same critique of adult overprotectiveness. The essay also explores how each poem frames the consequences of sheltering children differently, from personal vulnerability to societal ignorance and violence.
- Introduction: Overprotection and Its Consequences: Thesis: children learn best by confronting fears
- Poetic Devices and the Critique of Overprotective Adults: Contrasting rhyme scheme and free verse choices
- Motifs and Symbols of Fear: Owl symbolism versus historical narrative motifs
- Framing the Repercussions of Overprotection: Personal vulnerability versus societal ignorance and violence
- Conclusion: Confronting Fear Through Poetry: Both poems warn against shielding children from truth
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What makes this paper effective
- The essay sustains a clear comparative argument throughout, consistently returning to the shared theme that children benefit from confronting rather than avoiding fear.
- Each body paragraph is organized around a single analytical lens—poetic devices, motifs, and repercussions—which gives the comparison a logical, methodical structure.
- Specific textual evidence, including direct quotations with line numbers, anchors each analytical claim to the poems themselves rather than relying on unsupported assertion.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates the block-then-integrate method of comparative analysis: it introduces a point of comparison, examines each poem's approach separately, and then draws a synthesizing conclusion. This technique avoids the common student error of treating the two texts in isolation, instead keeping both poems in dialogue throughout every paragraph.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with a thematic introduction establishing the shared concern of overprotection. Three body paragraphs follow, each organized around a distinct comparative category: poetic form and devices, motifs and symbolism, and the consequences of sheltering children. A concluding paragraph ties the two poems together with an ironic observation about how the poems themselves generate fear. The Works Cited page follows MLA conventions.
Introduction: Overprotection and Its Consequences
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 the two poets use different poetic devices, motifs, and symbols, both poems share a common theme: children do best when they learn to confront their fears rather than run from them.
Poetic Devices and the Critique of Overprotective Adults
Although Wilbur and Collins use different poetic devices, both poets 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—a form that perfectly parallels the poem's eerie subject matter. Collins, on the other hand, employs a free verse style, which is fitting given that the children he depicts are likely older than the little girl in "A Barred Owl," as suggested by the wide range of world history topics referenced in the poem.
Whereas the parents of the little girl in "A Barred Owl" simply invent a nursery-rhyme-like tale that anthropomorphizes the owl, the history teacher in Collins's poem takes dishonesty to a far more troubling level. As a teacher, it is his professional responsibility to convey facts rather than pretend the Enola Gay "dropped one tiny atom on Japan" (line 12). The teacher wishes to shield his students from blood, violence, and terror, yet the history of the world cannot be truthfully told without its grim details.
Motifs and Symbols of Fear
Wilbur and Collins employ 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 after hearing the owl, the parents soothe her by claiming the bird's hoot merely asked, "Who cooks for you?" The owl is not a creature that would harm a little girl—it is simply a nocturnal predator. By reframing the sound as something harmless and whimsical, the parents unnecessarily bar their daughter from the truth about nature.
Collins, by contrast, draws on multiple historical narratives to show how the history teacher distorts reality. The overarching motif is that of school: the place where students are supposed to encounter objective facts and knowledge free from the biases that might be passed down at home. When teachers fail in that responsibility, they risk producing a generation of ignorant, arrogant people who perpetuate the very errors of history they were never taught to recognize.
Conclusion: Confronting Fear Through Poetry
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 in them are trying to ward off. Both poems function as warnings against overprotectiveness. Collins's poem implies that a society filled with uninformed, aggressive citizens is one susceptible to authoritarianism and demagoguery. Wilbur's poem shows how a child taught to block out genuine warning signs may eventually tune out her instincts altogether, leaving herself unable to protect herself. Through symbolism and imagery, both Collins and Wilbur urge readers to confront their own fears—and, crucially, to teach children to build the resilience needed to do the same.
Works Cited
Collins, Billy. "The History Teacher."
Wilbur, Richard. "A Barred Owl."
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