Point of View

The poem is told through an omniscient speaker who does not appear directly as a presence in the poem. This lack of presence keeps the focus directly on the two-headed calf, providing impartial and all-knowing perspectives on the calf’s life. For example, the speaker shares that the calf will die and be put on display at a museum “tomorrow,” “but tonight he is alive and in the north / field” (1 and 4-5). This ability to span time and space to provide information likens the speaker to a god, or to fate itself speaking.

The tone in the first stanza describing the calf’s death and display is detached and somewhat cold. The speaker refers to the two-headed calf as a “freak of nature,” which is how the farm boys view him. However, the speaker widens the perspective on the calf’s life in the second...