Boy at the Window by Richard Wilbur
By: Bred • Essay • 337 Words • January 5, 2010 • 2,577 Views
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"Boy at the Window" by Richard Wilbur is a poem about a young boy who feels very sad for a
snowman that is outside in a storm. The boy does not understand that the snowman isn't real and he
thinks that it is suffering outside in the snow storm. Richard Wilbur used a lot of figurative language in
"Boy at the Window" , and mostly personification.
In "Boy at the Window", Wilbur tried to make the character of the snowman have human and
animal characteristics. Instead of putting "A night of gnashings and enormous moan", he could've simply
put something like "A very stormy night", but he used personification and it made his poem more
interesting.
In this poem, Wilbur states it from the boys view first and then the snowmans view. In the first
stanza, Wilbur states that the boy "Seeing the snowman, standing all alone - In dusk and cold was more
than he could bear". It also hints that the boy was crying ("His tearful sight can hardly reach to where"). In
the first stanza, WIlbur uses some good adjectives such as describing the snowmans coal eyes as
"bitumen". The best metaphor that