"Compare and Contrast 'Catrin' by Gillian Clarke with 'Digging' by Seamus Heaney

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Charlie McCormick

“Compare and Contrast ‘Catrin’ by Gillian Clarke with ‘Digging’ by Seamus Heaney.

     In this essay I will be comparing and contrasting ‘Digging’ by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney with ‘Catrin’ by the Welsh poet Gillian Clarke. I will begin by discussing the aspects of ‘Digging’ which includes the title, content, theme, setting, style, message and my own personal response. I will also explain what the two poems are about. Following the discussion of ‘Digging’ I will then compare it with the poem ‘Catrin’.

     The tittle ‘Digging’ creates a lot of images and plans many scenarios towards what it actually stands for. What it tells me about the poem is that ‘Digging’ is the main feature and could be used to compare with other activities. It shows it’s about people digging with shiny spades on dirty parts of land.

     The setting of the poem changes due to Heaney’s memories of his father and grandfather. In stanza three Heaney describes where his father’s place of work is situated. To do this he added the purpose towards what he is actually digging for.

     “ Til his straining rump among the flowerbeds. The potato drills where he was digging.” (Stanza 3)

The thought of flowerbeds and potatoes creates images showing neatly spread out rows upon short, green beautiful grass. The flowerbeds add pride to where he is digging as it shows it’s a place well kept. To me, this scenario is described in a way that is based on an allotment.

     Seamus Heaney describes where his grandfather digs from stanzas six to eight.

     “Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods over his shoulder, going down for the good turf.” (Stanza 7)

I used all of stanza seven as a quote because the words written are all relevant to describe where his grandfather works. It proves that where his grandfather digs differentiated from where his grandfather digs. This also proves that the setting changes due to Seamus Heaney’s memories of his father and grandfather. The differences between the settings are shown by key words in stanzas. “Good turf” and “Sods” show that where his grandfather digs is based on a field. “Flowerbeds” and “Potatoes” shows that where his father digs is based on an allotment.

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     The style of the poem is written in a common way. The layout consists of short effective paragraphs that includes passionate descriptive writing about his life. The literacy device Seamus Heaney uses consists of onomatopoeia throughout parts of the poem. What this means is that the formation of a word whose sound suggests its meaning. An example of onomatopoeia is used in stanza two.

     “A clean rasping sound”. (Stanza 2)

When Seamus Heaney is describing what he can hear under his window, he uses the word “Rasping” to prove to the reader what it actually ...

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The Quality of Written Communication is fairly basic and thus the candidate does not require much knowledge of the English language to do particularly well. That isn't to say this will penalise their answer, as everything they write is nicely structured and well-expressed, but to improve the candidate could use a range of more challenging vocabulary and more complex punctuation points, to range the sentence structures and create an answer that is thoroughly engaging and convincing.

As an analytical discussion, the candidate must balance their focus on each poem, but there is quite clearly more analysis given to 'Digging' rather than 'Catrin', despite a lot of what the candidate says about 'Digging' being a good comparative point for discussion about 'Catrin', e.g. - the use of sibilance, alliteration and assonance creates a harmony with nature, reflective of the rural farm life than Heaney grew up with. But when Heaney stops reminiscing about his past and defies continuing life as a farmer with "his squat pen", his language becomes direct and clinical. The candidate did not go to this level of depth and did not note that the same can be said for Clarke's 'Catrin' - the language is impersonal and clinical when Clarke is speaking of being in labour, not knowing the child and being in a state of confusion and fear about whether or not she wishes to take on her motherly duties as society would encourage. But when she is giving birth she also uses more colourful language like Heaney; alliteration and assonance to "colour" the "hot, white room" as she fights of the "red rope of love" - it shows a the theme of conflict but also passion - the same intense passion Heaney shows as an admiration of his father.

Answer is in response to a question that assigns a comparative task between Gillian Clarke's poem 'Catrin' and Seamus Heaney's poem 'Digging'. The answer here displays good focus on the question steer but the primary issue with this answer is that it is not balanced and does not cover a sufficient or broad enough range of poetic devices to gain higher than a high C grade for GCSE. To improve, the candidate should, instead of discussing everything they know about each poem in turn, recognise comparative points between the two poems and comment on how those poetic devices feature in each poem. This way the candidate is encouraging active comparison between the two poems in each paragraph of their answer, rather than simply listing analysis of the poems individually.