Explore Seamus Heaney's portrayal of pain and suffering.

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Explore Seamus Heaney's portrayal of pain and suffering.

        Heaney, born 1939 was one of the nine children of Margaret and Patrick Heaney who ran a family farm in Mossbawn, Northern Ireland. Heaney enrolled at Queen's College in 1957 after attending his local town school and opting not to follow in his fathers success of being a farmer. He took up a position as a lecturer at St. Joseph's College, Belfast 1963! He then went on to acheive a scholarship in English Language and Literature, also devoting spare time to a poetry group. His success in impressing fellow poets, subsequently lead to his poetry being sent to England for publishing in 1964. The following year, Heaney became married to Marie Delvin, who gave him his first son Michael. Later, in 1965, 'Faber and Faber' published "Death of a Naturalist" which earned Heaney such awards as the E.C Gregory Award and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize!

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        " I sat all morning in the college sick bay". My first impressions of this poem was that it was somehow related to a school atmosphere. In seven brief stanzas, Heaney write about his younger brother's death, and how he was taken from school to go to a mourning service.

" A four foot box, a foot for every year", indicates that the diceased was only an infant! This was the last line in the poem and an obvious clue to whom Heaney was referring. I think Heaney at the time was confused about the situation and he talks of how people like "Big Jim Evans" commented on the incident in which his brother was killed. "It was a hard blow" is a reassuring fact, implied in effect that the brother could not have helped himself any better than anyone else could have in the same situation.

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Heaney mentions a baby. He says that it "cooed and laughed". I think this signifies innocense of how a baby would not be able to appreciate its brother's death, but also that babies aren't expected to either. It is oblivious to a baby as to what and why an occurance like this is all around it. The baby is obviously the only being there who is not expected to mourn.

Heaney's father, also, holds a similar state of mind like a baby in a sense. He appears to be weak when he thinks about the death of such a ...

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