The History Teacher by Billy Collins | Analysis

The theme of Billy Collins' poetry 'history teacher' is violence, growth, and loss of innocence.

The theme of violence is explored through the way teachers and students perform outside the classroom, as well as historical events and periods drawn by teachers. When they enter the classroom, students may be satisfied with the interesting way the courses are built. But as they go out they will show violent behavior against the weak.

This theme explains how children lose their childishness. The teacher tried to protect them from the world's mistakes and evils, but failed. Children take violent behavior against others, in fact they lose their innocence as they are not exposed to good and evil in fact

The main character of Billy Collins 'history teacher' is the collective character of history teachers and students. The narrator has not only observers of the event (classes in the classroom and children's activities in the playground), but also knowledge of the teacher's thoughts and emotions. Children can be analyzed as collective personality. Even if they do not mention their reactions in history classes, we can think that they are very satisfied with the story they invented. When I heard the ice age and asked that the Spanish Inquisition contained only a series of interesting reactions to the Spanish question, they imagined "I must wear a sweater" (l.4) it's simple.

Ignorance played a big part in Billy Collins poetry. Because he talked about the story of this innocent history teacher and his students. Unlike Wilbur's poetry, the use of Collins's irony clearly shows that bully bullies are doomed to repeat history because they do not know anything about the past. For example, "The children will leave their classroom and go to the playground to torture the weak and wise." This sentence shows a satirical comparison between the bully and the knowledge of past events It is. (Line 13 to 15) Another ironic thing is that the teachers of history believe that his students are still innocent and need protection. Collins also emphasized ignorant themes between his students and the past people, using juxtaposition in his poem. This comparison reinforces his idea about the importance of not knowing anything about history. Until the end, as the teacher walked home to the "flowerbed and white fence", he was completely informed of his I was not aware of the impact.