Owls Essay

In “Owls,” author Mary Oliver communicates the duality of nature. Oliver establishes her claim by using rich diction, imagery and juxtaposing owls and flowers to express and illuminate her reflective tone toward nature, and how it can be both a beautiful and horrible place at the same time. Oliver establishes her view of nature through her profound diction. She uses “luminous wonder” as another name for the snowy owl along with “exquisitely swift” which shows her amazement with nature and how it is such a wonderful thing. She also uses “dusky yards” and “headless bodies,” these words have a negative connotation, which helps to hint that at the same time things in nature can be both beautiful and horrifying. She starts off using positive words to describe the owls and then the negative words, such as “headless,” or “death-bringer” to show the magnitude of how horrifying some things can be in nature, but if you look at them under a different light, or perspective, they can are also beautiful, magnificent creatures. Oliver further establishes her claim by using imagery to describe the owls and flowers. Oliver uses words and phrases such as “… the white gleam of its feathers…” to emphasize the sheer beauty of these magnificent creatures. The beauty of these creatures is further described with “… exquisitely swift and perfect…,” but then Oliver uses negatively connoted words to describe the owls when “the great horned [owl] is in the trees its razor-tipped toes,” this tells us they are dangerous and when Oliver “looks up at it and listens to the heavy, crisp, breathy snapping of its hooked beak,” this further hunts at how they can be a horrifying thing to see. Oliver describes the flowers as “red and pink and white tents of softness and nectar,” which shows that they are a beautiful site to see and be around. But then she says “each flower is small, and lonely, but in their sheer and silent abundance the roses become an immutable force,” which helps to prove