"Boy at the Window" Analysis

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Boy at the Window Loneliness is like a cold winter day. Loneliness IS a cold winter day. A cold winter day is a dark, grainy day. It is the kind of day you’d imagine if you were by yourself and all alone. “Boy at the Window” is the kind of poem that takes place on such days. Loneliness also leads to pity. Pity is the shameless result of such loneliness. In “Boy at the Window”, by Richard Wilbur, the author evaluates the poem through allusion, metaphor, speaker, tone, smile, end rhyme, imagery, and personification. Allusions are references to factors of a culture such as literature and history- that writers expect their readers to recognize. In “Boy at the Window,” the reference in the poem is used in line 8, “As outcast Adam gave to paradise.” Line 8 refers to the story of Adam and Eve in the Book of Genesis when they were cast out of paradise. Metaphor is a comparison between two unlike things without the use of like or as. In “Boy at the Window”, metaphor is used twice. It is used in line 4, “A night of gnashing and enormous moan, and in line 14, “A trickle of the purest rain, a tear. In line 4, the night is compared to someone screaming because everything is so loud. In line 14, the rain is compared to a tear coming off someone’s face. The speaker in the story is the voice talking to us. The top half of the poem is told to us by the snowman. The bottom half of the story is told by the little boy. Therefore, both halves of the poem are told by two different characters. The tone in a story is a writer’s or speaker’s attitude toward a subject and toward an audience. In the poem, the tone is conveyed as sad and depressing. The helplessness the boy feels reveals the feeling of the tone. The poem talks about the boy’s emotions and how he is sad because he cannot go outside and play, and also how lonely the snowman feels because the boy is inside. Similes
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