'Death of a Naturalist'

Heaney goes on in the third line of the first stanza to show the passage of time.The Second Stanza begins with Haney seeing his father crying, a man who Heaney had always seen as being somebody very composed in the face of tragedy. But that day when he came home he saw his father broken. His father had been a stereotype of strength. His father had always taken funerals in stride and been a source of strength to the bereaved. Heaney skillfully taken us as he enters the house, where he meets his father, ‘ Big Jim Evans’ , the baby in its pram and the mourners gathered In the room.Heaney finds the atmosphere in the room extremely strange and not normal.  He is shocked and embarrassed as the adults greet and condole with him, having been informed as to the fact he is the elder brother who lives away at boarding school. His life has come to a standstill and his childhood has altered and death has come to his doorstep.  At the same time his baby brother gurgles with laughter and pleasure on seeing him. Heaney breaks another stereotype when he shows his mother as the stronger half in the family. He shows a reversal of roles, the father broken and crying and the mother strong and angry. The mother’s anger is directed at the person responsible for the accident, the speeding careless motorist had brought the innocence of his younger brother to an end.The poet shows us the arrival of the corpse of his younger brother as something impersonal and his body painted in death.This contrasts with the final section of the poem where we are showed him alone with his brother. The calm mood is beautifully shown by the snowdrops & candles soothing his soul. The flowers are symbolic in the poem but also in reality showing life after death. He sees his brother after a span of six weeks who had been as cheerful in the good days but now he lay there pale. But other wise little had changed in his appearance. Heaney likens the bruise to a poppy, which is a flower linked with death and soothing of pain. (Soothing of pain because from poppy we get opium which is a drug, kills pain). Heaney shows the bruise as being worn, metaphorically as if the bruise could be rubbed off. His younger brother appears as if a sleep ‘simile’. We are contrast the ugly corpse stanched and bandaged which becomes a sleeping child with no scars, dead but not disfigured.The last line of the poem brings out most sadly and skillfully- the size of the coffin is the measure of the child’s life.