Boy at the Window by Richard Wilbur

"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 Wilbur used was when he was comparing the stares between the boy

and the snowman as "Returns him such a god forsaken stare as outcast Adam gave to paradise." I think

that means that the boy was staring at the snowman as if he could'nt go back to him, and could'nt do

anything about his "suffering".

Towards the end of the second stanza, Wilbur uses personification to make it seem like the

snowman was crying with the boy ("He melts enough to drop from one soft eye/ A trickle of the purest

rain, a tear/ For the child at the bright pane surrounded by/ Such warmth, such light, such love, and so

much fear.") All throughout the poem Wilbur used personification for the snowman. Examples -- [1st

stanza, line 6] " The pale faced figure with bitumen