Comparison of Cynddylan on a Tractor by R.S Thomas and Docker by Seamus Heaney.

Authors Avatar

Poetry Coursework

There are many similarities between the poems “Cynddylan on a Tractor” by R.S Thomas and “Docker” by Seamus Heaney.

Seamus Heaney is an Irish Catholic who lived in Northern Ireland for most of his life. He was a lecturer in Belfast during the 1970s at the peak of the Northern Irish Troubles. He was witness to the sectarianism and institutionalised discrimination that was part and parcel of Northern Irish life during this period; the poem “Docker” reflects this. The docker works in the shipyards of Belfast, whose employees were 95% Protestant and where sectarianism was rife.

In “Docker”, the subject is shown to be someone who cannot separate himself from his work and religion. The two completely control everything he does. However, his god is not the loving God of the Gospels. The docker’s god is more like the wrathful pedantic god of the Old Testament.

“God is a foreman with certain definite views

Who orders life in shifts of work and leisure.”

But for him God and work are one and the same; the dockyard is his life.

“Mosaic imperatives bang home like rivets,…

A factory horn will blare the resurrection.”

These lines also demonstrate Heaney’s sympathy for his subject. His commandments or prejudices have been hammered into him “like rivets”, his only understanding of religion is through the medium of his work, “a factory horn will blare the resurrection”. The docker is no specific person, he could be anyone. He is an anonymous composite – the face of the Irish sectarian.

This distorted quasi-Protestantism has led him into deep-seated prejudice and bigotry against Catholics. The hatred has manifested itself into violence.

“That fist would drop a hammer on a Catholic”

Join now!

This is so entrenched in the docker’s beliefs that it doesn’t even need to be said – his bigotry is part of his persona.

“Oh yes, that sort of thing could start again”

“Oh yes” adds a colloquial tone to the statement, as if it is a maxim being given by an elder. Set against the backdrop of the recent Troubles in Northern Ireland, this is particularly believable.

Heaney uses language very skilfully to portray the docker and his life. He uses metaphors, similes and visual imagery to describe the docker’s  physical appearance.

...

This is a preview of the whole essay