Richard Wilbur's poem “The Boy in the Window” describes a young boy looking at the snowman he has built outside his window at dusk. Noticing the cold external environment in which his snowman will have to spend the night, the boy cries; however, the poem reveals that the snowman's reaction to his environment is very different. Since this discrepancy is the central tension that drives the poem, one could say that “Boy at the Window” is a poem about interpretation and misinterpretation. Although the reader expects the boy, as a rational, thinking human being, to form an accurate understanding of the snowman, ironically it is the snowman who has the most astute powers of observation. The structure of the poem, with its two parallel stanzas, evokes the binary oppositions on which “The Boy in the Window” functions; the most important of these binaries is the human/inhuman hierarchy, which Wilbur subverts by privileging the snowman's point of view over that of the boy. Ultimately, as the poem's title reveals, the poem is based on the snowman's interpretation of the boy he sees in the window, rather than the boy's perception of the snowman. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In many ways, Wilbur initially compares the boy and the snowman. The image of the boy and the personified snowman facing and examining each other through the window indicates that they could be read almost as mirror images of each other. Furthermore, both the boy and the snowman perform the same actions in the poem: they “see” each other (1, 11), and both cry over the other's plight. The simultaneous crying also suggests that the boy and the snowman feel an empathetic connection to each other; in the shortest sentence of the poem, Wilbur even notes that the snowman “is moved” at the sight of the boy (11). The form of the poem, with its two juxtaposed stanzas of equal length, brings to mind the image of the boy and the snowman facing each other and also supports the idea that they should be read as equal and comparable figures. Despite the superficial assertion of the boy and the snowman as parallel figures, however, aspects of the poem's form, such as the rhyme scheme, actually provide the first clues to their separateness and disparity. Line 8, in the first verse, and line 10, in the second, both contain a rhyme which is reported above the break in the verse and which therefore fills the gap between the two verses: line 8 ends with "Paradise", while verse 10 ends with “die.” Although the words are placed close enough to be recognized as a continuation of the established rhyme scheme, they form a misplaced rhyme rather than a perfect rhyme; the idea that the two stanzas are connected by an external rhyme first suggests that the boy and the snowman are not as connected as they initially seem or as the reader expects. Further highlighting this rift between the two figures, the poem is filled with contrasts that reveal that the boy and the snowman come from fundamentally different backgrounds. The most obvious way Wilbur emphasizes this difference is through diction in the first two and last two lines, which describe their respective surroundings. Wilbur contrasts the “dusk and cold” of the snowman's outside world with the “light” and “warmth” inside the boy's house (2, 16). Furthermore, the snowman is completely "alone", while the boy is "surrounded by... much love" (1, 15-6). These couplescontrasting binaries add a level of tension or complexity to the poem's superficial sense of empathy and connection. Wilbur goes beyond simply evoking the binary oppositions of dark/light, heat/cold, and alone/loved in the poem and instead subverts and complicates their hierarchical structure. In the poem's final line, "so much heat, so much light, so much love, and so much fear," Wilbur lists the privileged or positive halves of these binary oppositions. (e.g., “light” is always privileged over darkness, and the “ heat” is always privileged over “cold”) (16). The sudden interjection of "fear", which is a negative concept, immediately upsets the image of warmth and happiness that had previously characterized the boy's environment. The positioning of “fear” as the final word in the poem, combined with the idea that there is “so much of it,” also causes the reader to reconsider the initial, positive nature of the descriptors surrounding the boy's situation, subverting his privileged privileges . position in their binary pair. The subversion of these minor hierarchies in the poem constitutes the poem's main irony, the subversion of the human/inhuman binary. Although one might expect the boy, as a rational, thinking human being, to have a higher understanding of his world than the snowman, an inanimate object, the poem actually proves the opposite. Indeed, the first stanza posits a number of the boy's assumptions about the snowman that the second stanza contradicts, indicating that the boy has misinterpreted the snowman and his situation. The boy judges the snowman to have “bitumen eyes,” while in the second stanza Wilbur reveals that the snowman's eyes are actually “soft” (6, 13). Furthermore, the boy reads the snowman's “look” as an indication of his unhappiness towards the cold and the wind (7); however, the second stanza reveals that the snowman is actually “content” and that “going inside” would bring about his “death,” or cause him to melt (9-10). Finally, the boy's assumption that the snowman's gaze is "God-forsaken" suggests that he does not realize that the snowman, in the second stanza, is actively looking back and examining the boy in turn (7) . The sentence that states that the boy's "tearful sight can hardly reach" better the snowman ultimately indicates that the boy's way of seeing or interpreting the snowman is deficient (5). Wilbur highlights the boy's lack of vision or understanding through the use of two biblical allusions in the first stanza. The first possible allusion is found in the verse which describes «a night of screeching and enormous groaning», whose diction perhaps brings to mind the parable of the ten talents of the Gospel of Matthew in which the infidels are driven out to a place characterized by «lamenting and gnashing of teeth" (Mt 25.30). The final, and perhaps most obvious, allusion is the simile contained in the last two lines of the first stanza, in which the snowman looks at the boy with a "look / as the outcast Adam gave to Paradise" (7-8) . Once again, just like the first allusion, this simile highlights a biblical situation in which a sinner was cast out and punished; this comparison suggests that the boy sees the snowman in much the same way, as someone who has been forcibly thrown into the cold. Reading the second stanza, however, indicates that this is a misinterpretation of the snowman's reaction, because “frozen water is his element” (12). The simile that concludes the first verse also contributes to Wilbur's subversion of the human/inhuman hierarchy through the slippage of these concepts between the vehicle and the tenor. In.