The psychological development of experiencing death during childhood creates the journey from innocence with guidance to experience. This is a prominent theme in Harwood’s poem “Barn Owl” as the “child who believed death clean and final, not this obscene” comes to the realisation of the pain and suffering of death. In the first stanza Harwood uses the metaphors “A horny fiend” which represents the child rebelling against their father and juxtaposed from that “angle- mind” which is a contrast from the father’s vision of the child. This is also a biblical reference displaying the purity of childhood. Harwood uses in stanza three’s line “master of life and death” and “a wisped- haired judge” to represent the idea that the rebellious child has
