Introduction for “On Turning Ten”

There comes a time when kids have to mature: abandon their imaginative fantasy and accept the harsh reality. This

metamorphic transformation is inevitable, and children tend to dramatize or even deny it as an act to preserve their child-like

minds and innocent. The readers empathize with the speaker's frustration; it is as if a part of himself is ripped away., never to be

seen again. In the poem On Turning Ten, author Billy Collins highlights the speaker's pessimistic yet realistic attitude towards his

tenth birthday by exaggerating the speaker's discomfort and pain through vivid imageries, structuring the stanzas as dialogues

between the audience and the speaker, and revealing the speaker's new understandings of life brought upon by his birthday.