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Billy Collins The History Teacher Essay

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In the poem “The History Teacher” the author Billy Collins explains how teacher used his language, imagery, and tone to protect the innocent of his students. Billy Collins used imagery in his poem by paint very graphic pictures in reader’s minds to get his message across. The pictures allowed readers to get a sense of how the history teacher was protecting his students by making light of very brutal events that took place in history. This poem contains an aspect of comedy while also interposing the reader with a sense of sadness due to the fact that the teachings of Billy Collins are obviously inaccurate. The teacher painted a picture of an ideal world, one where everyone still held on to their innocence and didn’t have to worry about the dangers we face in today’s time. In the first stanza the speaker used his language as well as imagery to dull down the truth behind the Ice Age. The speaker states “he told them the Ice Age was really just/the Chilly Age, a period of a million years/when everyone had to wear sweaters” (2-4). The Ice Age is a period of colder global climate that can last for years at a time, causing massive changes to the earth’s surface. The Ice age overall brought the extinction of many animal species and made plant food very scarce for humans. The …show more content…
This gives readers a firm overview to how he plans on explaining the events throughout the poem. The poem keeps the same tone of purity throughout its entirety. Billy Collins manages to bring light and comedy to the different events, by explain them as if they had no damaging impact and transforming them into innocent events. The view of comedy in his poem originates from the examples he gives of how the teacher wants his students to view these occurrences. However, the poem presents this comedic tone there is still an underlying tone of sadness that the teacher doesn’t want to present to

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