Harwood’s Barn Owl
At the beginning of the poem it is daybreak and all the members of the house are still asleep except for the child. The child, in the poem, is portrayed as both good and bad, a fiend and an angel. The father is shown as a powerful figure in the child’s life with evidence shown in the phrase “old No-Sayer”. This means ‘the one who opposes’ and this confirms that he could be the one that makes the decisions, decides yes or no, in the family.
In the second stanza, the father is “robbed of power”, this is because he is asleep. He cannot hold the child back or tell her no, he wields no power while asleep. I think the young girl takes the father’s gun because of the issue the father has with women not being strong enough or …show more content…
The girl cannot un-fire the gun or place the bullet back in. She is now afraid and lonely and she has to wake up to the world. She has lost her innocence and realised going out with the intent to kill does not always mean someone or something dies.
Verbs that dramatise the movement of the injured owl are: swayed, ruined, beating, dropped, dribbled, tangling, and hopped; a line of the poem that describes the maimed owl is: “...and dribbled through the loose straw/tangling in bowels...”. The effect of the last lines in stanza five express the pain the owl is feeling, ‘it is blinded by pain’ and therefore cannot see. The owl would also be wondering why the girl is so cruel, we do not know of anything he has done to harm or annoy her.
In these lines, the word ‘mirror’ is mentioned. A mirror is an object that reflects, for example: water, glass, television screens. These all mirror whatever is looking into it.
The reaction of the father in stanza six does not surprise me. He wants to put the owl out of its misery and wants the girl to finish what she started. This attitude presents the idea that he could be a farmer as he is straightforward, gets on with things and has been hardened, which tells us that he may have had to put down animals before this
At the beginning of the poem it is daybreak and all the members of the house are still asleep except for the child. The child, in the poem, is portrayed as both good and bad, a fiend and an angel. The father is shown as a powerful figure in the child’s life with evidence shown in the phrase “old No-Sayer”. This means ‘the one who opposes’ and this confirms that he could be the one that makes the decisions, decides yes or no, in the family.
In the second stanza, the father is “robbed of power”, this is because he is asleep. He cannot hold the child back or tell her no, he wields no power while asleep. I think the young girl takes the father’s gun because of the issue the father has with women not being strong enough or …show more content…
The girl cannot un-fire the gun or place the bullet back in. She is now afraid and lonely and she has to wake up to the world. She has lost her innocence and realised going out with the intent to kill does not always mean someone or something dies.
Verbs that dramatise the movement of the injured owl are: swayed, ruined, beating, dropped, dribbled, tangling, and hopped; a line of the poem that describes the maimed owl is: “...and dribbled through the loose straw/tangling in bowels...”. The effect of the last lines in stanza five express the pain the owl is feeling, ‘it is blinded by pain’ and therefore cannot see. The owl would also be wondering why the girl is so cruel, we do not know of anything he has done to harm or annoy her.
In these lines, the word ‘mirror’ is mentioned. A mirror is an object that reflects, for example: water, glass, television screens. These all mirror whatever is looking into it.
The reaction of the father in stanza six does not surprise me. He wants to put the owl out of its misery and wants the girl to finish what she started. This attitude presents the idea that he could be a farmer as he is straightforward, gets on with things and has been hardened, which tells us that he may have had to put down animals before this