In the poems “A Barred Owl” by Richard Wilbur and
“The History Teacher” by Billy Collins, an adult comforts a
child/children with lies meant to disguise a harsher reality.
Both poems use humor while telling the lie, but the second
features a bone of darker satire to demonstrate the naiveté
of the adult. The poems also depict in their presentation of
the adults, as in “Owl” a parent simply wants to comfort a
child to sleep while the teacher in “Teacher” is almost
diabolical in his actions. Using these literary devices, both
explore the legitimacy of the lie told. “Owl” justifies the lie
while “Teacher” fully condemns it.
A prominent feature of both poems is humor. In
“Owl” the humor is in the parent’s explanation of the owl’s
calls, as he is simply asking, “’Who cooks for you?’”
Rather than a blood-thirsty predator on the hunt, the owl is
falsely portrayed as curious, wishing to have a conversation
with the child about the child’s meals. The parent even tells
the child this is “odd,” and it assuages the child’s fears in
order to get her to sleep. “Teacher” also features humor, as
the history teacher rewrites historical events to avoid
explaining the harsher truth to students. The poet
purposefully makes these rewrites humorous as “the Ice
Age” becomes “chilly,” the “Spanish Inquisition” has many
“questions,” and “the War of the Roses” was “in a garden.”
The humor is meant to give readers the initial idea that such
stories could be harmless. However, the description of the
children bullying others in the schoolyard (lines 14-17)
turns light humor to darker satire. The poem is not just an
anecdote but a critique of this educational strategy—one
which seeks to keep children in the dark about their past to
preserve their “innocence.” Such efforts, the poem would
suggest, are naïve as they failed to alter violent behaviors
and instead turn a blind eye to them, as illustrated by
continued violence by the schoolchildren. “Owl” also
connects to reality, but not through humor. Lines 10-12
describe the owl’s real intent in its voice as it hunts small
creatures. This is distinct from “The History Teacher’s”
satire, however, as it suggests no condemnation of the
initial lie, but simply justifies the intent to “domesticate a
fear.”
The poems also express different feelings about the
adult lying to the child/children. In “Owl,” the adult can be
assumed to be a parent, as they must take care of the
frightened girl in her room. The poem justifies the adult’s
lie, as the girl has been “wakened” from sleep and must be
comforted. Were the parent to tell the truth, then it would
make the girl’s “terrors bravely clear” and she wouldn’t be
able to sleep. This brings the speaker to ponder the
importance of words, as the right ones can have entirely
different effects. Words construct the girl’s reality, and thus
the parents must pick which reality to create. As the
situation of comforting a child that this poem focuses on is
a universal one, most, if not all, readers, especially fellow
parents, would agree with the parent’s choice to pick up the
“words” that “send a small child back to sleep at night.”
While the parent’s motive is understandable, the history
teacher comes off as more diabolical than anything else. To
begin, the very selection of the teacher to be the liar makes
the reader disagree with his actions, as society usually
views teachers as tellers of the truth. Lying to small
children feels like a betrayal of trust. The author also used
the word “innocence,” a word that usually has a positive
connotation, in a way that insults the students and readers,
as it suggests (they are unaware of their own decisions.)