Owl (Symbol)
The owl is a symbol of innocence, playing a key role in the poem and situating it in reference to the genre of bildungsroman, or coming-of-age. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker is excited to shoot the owl, symbolizing her desire to prove her independence. The speaker describes the owl in the same tone and with the same adjectives as she uses to describe her father—she is condescending, rebellious, and delighted that both her father and the owl are sleeping, thus “robb[ing]” the father of his “power” and similarly rendering the owl defenseless due to his “day-light riddled eyes.” By aligning the owl with her father, the speaker connects the owl to the idea of independence—she is rebelling against her innocently-sleeping household by choosing to shoot this innocently-sleeping animal. Additionally, the speaker’s emphasis on the weakness of the owl symbolizes her need to establish her own power and agency. By shooting the owl, she hopes to gain the “prize” of doing something that is normally reserved for adults—shooting a gun—and in fact something that is normally reserved to powerful figures such as judges and masters, as the speaker alludes to.
After shooting the owl, and thus destroying her innocence about death, the speaker regrets her decision and wishes she was naïve again. This is again symbolically represented by the speaker’s description of the owl itself. The speaker moves closer to the owl, wanting to observe the consequences of her own actions yet also linking herself to the owl. Unlike in the previous stanzas, when the owl was aligned with her father, the speaker now sees herself in the owl – “those eyes that did not see / mirror[ed] my cruelty” (lines 31). The disturbing, injured owl becomes a lens through which the child sees her own loss of innocence about death. This linkage between the speaker and the owl is further developed in line 41, when the speaker describes herself as “owl blind.” In this final description, the speaker now firmly merges a description of herself with the owl. Like the owl, the speaker will be irrevocably affected by her actions. The owl is dead, and so is the speaker’s formerly naïve point of view.
Blindness/Sight (Symbol)
Vision, blindness, and sight are recurring symbols that represent the poem’s key theme: a child’s loss of innocence. The child begins by describing the owl as having “day-light riddled eyes,” suggesting that she has chosen to shoot the owl in the early morning, when it returns from its nighttime hunting to sleep (line 10). This description of the owl is a form of dramatic irony given that it is the speaker who is blind to the consequences of her own actions. This line also serves to symbolically tie the bird to the speaker's father, who also has his eyes “riddled” or clouded by sleep. Thus, the description heightens the sense of rebellion in the initial stanzas, as the speaker views herself as separate from and even more powerful than both the owl and her father.
In stanzas four through seven, which depict the shooting and its aftermath, the speaker uses the symbol of vision to remove her own agency—she transforms into a passive “lonely / child” who can only “watch[], afraid” at the consequences of what she has set into motion (lines 21-23). For example, the speaker stood still and simply “watched” and saw the owl struggle, witnessing the carnage that she has caused (lines 21, 28). Instead of focusing on her own actions, the speaker emphasizes vision to show her newly passive role and her horrified observance of the owl’s injuries.
Finally, the speaker has become less naïve and now “sees” death more clearly, whereas before she was blind to the harsh realities of death. The speaker finally describes herself as “owl blind”: the speaker has transferred her metaphorical blindness about the nature of death into the physical blindness of the dead owl. Therefore, she uses the symbol of “blindness” to describe her innocence and lack of understanding about the consequences of shooting the owl and killing it.
Sun (Symbol)
The sunlight in the poem symbolizes the speaker’s newfound ability to see the realities of death; the dark “obscenity” of adult life becomes illuminated to her as if shining in sunlight. The very first word in the poem, “daybreak” (line 1), foreshadows the child’s transformative experience in murdering the owl; she will move from the peaceful night of her pre-shooting life to the startling, “blind[ing]” (line 41) sunlight of a darker reality. In line 2, the speaker describes herself as “blessed by the sun,” which ironically contrasts with her sinful mission to murder the owl. This odd juxtaposition foreshadows the speaker’s loss of innocence as she realizes the true significance of sunlight. In a literal sense, the sunlight allows her to fully see the carnage that she inflicted on the owl. In a symbolic sense, the sunlight represents the speaker witnessing a cruel reality like death. The poem’s final couplet—“owl blind in early sun / for what I had begun” (lines 41-42)—builds on this symbol by suggesting that the speaker’s transformation into adulthood is only beginning. The “early sun” of the morning symbolizes the speaker’s first step toward losing her innocence.
Relatedly, the sun further symbolizes the relationship between the speaker and the owl—at first, the speaker juxtaposes herself with the owl by describing how she is “blessed by the sun,” while the nocturnal eye simply “dream[s] / light’s useless time away” (line 12-13). The speaker thus aligns herself with daylight and the owl with nighttime, creating a distance between them that reflects the speaker’s unempathetic attitude toward the owl. The speaker further suggests that sunlight has removed the owl’s ability to defend itself or witness what is happening as its eyes are “day-light riddled” (line 10). However, the speaker and the owl are more similar than the speaker believes. Like the owl, the speaker’s vision is “riddled”—she cannot fully see or comprehend the consequences of her actions. Similarly, after the shooting, the injured owl cannot “bear the light” of the sun, just as the weeping speaker cannot bear the reality of what she has done or see the full obscenity of death (line 32).
Judge (Symbol)
The child describes herself as a judge, symbolizing the power that she holds over the owl. As the speaker states, the gun gives her the power to “punish beak and claw,” much as a judge’s authority in society allows them to determine punishments using their unilateral discretion. The symbol of a judge is ironic for multiple reasons. First, the child’s actions do not represent law or justice, but the very opposite—the infliction of punishment on the innocent owl for no reason other than the child’s capricious choice. Second, the speaker herself acknowledges that she is a “wisp-haired judge,” pointing to her innocence and inability to actually make determinations about whether violence or punishment is in fact warranted. The judge symbol also serves to make concrete the speaker’s description of herself as “master of life or death,” using a societal role that in fact allows someone, through the legal system, to make a life-or-death determination in a death-penalty case. Finally, the judge symbol connects to the religious and moral undertones in the poem, as God can be envisioned as a moral judge who chooses to either “bless[]” people, as the speaker believes at the beginning of the poem, or punish people for sins like the violence the speaker is about to commit. This further heightens the irony of the judge symbol, as the speaker herself can be morally judged for her heinous act.
Gun (Symbol)
The gun serves as a foil to the owl—while the owl represents the speaker’s innocence, the gun symbolizes the mechanism by which the speaker loses that innocence. At the beginning of the poem, the speaker has some knowledge about the gun. Presumably she knows how to fire it; she knows that it belongs to her father; and she knows that she shouldn’t have it, as she has “crept” out of the house to avoid detection while holding it (line 3). The gun thus metonymizes the speaker’s desire for rebellion—because it is a dangerous, illicit, and adult object, the speaker is attracted to the gun as a means of rebelling against her father. However, the gun “falls” at the end of the poem, symbolizing the speaker’s regret. Harwood uses the phrase “fallen gun” twice, which is notable given this is a short poem with limited space; the repetition strongly emphasizes the speaker’s regret over her actions, as she drops the gun in shock and in doing so symbolically distances herself from her attempt at rebellion. In stanza four, Harwood uses enjambment—the continuation of a sentence across a line of poetry—to emphasize the symbolic meaning of the gun. The speaker is “afraid / by the fallen gun,” which carries a dual meaning. She is both physically standing by the fallen gun, and the gun is what makes her afraid. This association of the word “afraid” with the gun itself contrasts with the earlier stanzas, when the speaker viewed the gun as a source of power. In stanza six, the speaker’s father hands her the fallen gun and commands her to shoot the owl again. This represents how the speaker is now forced to move forward on a path toward growing up and further losing her innocence—she is not permitted to simply run away from the gun and the darkness that it represents, but is required to pick it up and use it again, thus moving toward adulthood.
