Boy at the Window
In “Boy at the Window”, Richard Wilbur uses examples of contrast, personification and allegory in order to convey a message about the fate of childhood innocence. Wilbur tries to tell the reader that the innocence felt by children is doomed from the start to succumb to the force of experience.
Contrast is the strongest literary device utilized in “Boy at the Window”, with the numerous examples serving to drive home the loss of innocence and set a tone for the whole poem. Wilbur juxtaposes the bitter cold outside with the warmth inside the home where the child resides; while the child looks at the snowman’s predicament from his own perspective, the more experienced snowman knows that he would be doomed were he to enter the warm house. This leads into a contrast between the worldly snowman, who understands the necessary division between his position and the boy’s, and the young child who feels only sympathy. Ice and water form another example of contrast; “Though frozen water is his [the snowman’s] element”, the snowman cries a single tear of melted water out of sympathy for the young boy’s sorrow. What the boy desires, for the snowman to be inside the warmth rather than out in the cold, cannot be. A second group of contrasting images is the difference between loneliness and company. Much of the boy’s distress for the snowman’s plight is in regards to the fact that the snowman is all alone. The boy, on the other hand, resides in a house, a symbol of family and togetherness. The snowman has no family other than the boy that created him, and yet the boy still weeps for what is his own construction. Love and fear is also used in an ironic sense. While it is the snowman who has everything to fear from entering the house and melting away, it is the boy instead who feels fear for the snowman being alone outside.
