The Writer Robert Wilbur Analysis

“The Writer” by Robert Wilbur portrays the speaker, a father, who sincerely hopes for his daughter’s success in her writing career as well as in her life. As, a writer himself, the speaker silently waits for his daughter in the staircase as he hears her struggle through her writing journey. Robert Wilbur, not only creates the title “the writer” to convey the audiences the daughter’s aspiration as a writer, but to convey that writing itself is a journey. Wilbur seems to direct this poem to other parents and adolescents where the parents can only watch their child fight through the obstacles to reach their goals while the adolescent will inevitably go through the experience like The speaker’s daughter. “The Writer” is a literary work …show more content…
From the 1st line of the poem, readers can comprehend the subject’s love for his daughter. The speaker claims that the daughter is in “the prow”(line 1) of the house, The prow represents the head of the ship; therefore, the prow in the poem gives a glimpse to the readers that the daughter is the center of the subject’s house and as well as his life. The speaker also states that the daughter refuses his “easy figure” meaning that the daughter rejects to compromise her passion for an easy path. The onomatopoeic sound of the words in this poem mirrors both the inner and physical struggle of the bird and the daughter. The words such as battered, humped, trapped, batter against the brilliance, clearly enunciates the b and the d sound that represent the bruised bird physically and the distressed life of his daughter. But when the bird frees itself and the speaker finally acknowledge that his daughter can find her way out too, the softer sounds such as the s sounds in spirits, suddenly sure, smooth presents in the poem to portray that after all the harshness in life comes a peacefulness in the future.