From the poem we get the impression Dan Taggert does the young Heaney no favors because he doesn’t care about anything, he is drowning kittens swearing in front of a six year old child, ‘scraggy wee shits’ shows he really doesn’t care. ‘Out on a dunghill he put the dead glossy kittens’ showing again his lack of care for anything.
Heaney uses words beginning with ‘s’ such as ‘soft’, ‘scraping’, ‘soused’ and ‘slung’. These are all words used 2 describe. The sound is repeated to give more effect. There is also a lot of alliteration in this poem with the repetition of this soft ‘s’ sound.
This poem has many energetic verbs in it but I have picked up on one in particular it is ‘bobbing’ this gives the best sense of action of what a young Heaney has to watch. ‘Bobbing’, meaning how the kittens were drowned they were going under the water then coming back up, shows how they were struggling which would have been a terrible thing to watch. Words such as ‘slung’, ‘slogged’, ‘mealy’ and ‘crisp’ make everything sound very dramatic and convey horrible images to the reader looking at the poem through the young boys point of view.
Heaney uses the word ‘Remains’, which makes the kittens sound like they are dead and that is what is left of them. ‘Dunghill’ reinforces ‘scraggy wee shits’ in that the kittens are just rubbish and meant nothing, both refer to excretion which again makes everything sound again like rubbish or waste.
However towards the end of ‘Early Purges’ the tone of the poem changes as Heaney matures and realizes why these kittens or for that matter any other animal need to be killed, now this is giving the effect that he is a normal boy.
These images of ‘kittens drowning’, ‘pulling hens necks’ and ‘pup prodded to drown’ must have traumatized Heaney as a child. For any child growing up on a farm they would have the same experience, perhaps not a good upbringing because they wouldn’t know any better in later life. Dan Taggert was the main influence in Heaney’s upbringing on the farm during this emotive poem.
The second poem that will help me understand Heaneys upbringing is ‘An Advancement of learning’. I will start with the title ‘ advancement of learning’ this shows he is changing form childhood to adult hood, Heaney is learning new things and over coming hurdles in his life. In the first stanza ‘the river nosed past’, this is as if the river is reflective and is reflecting everything above it, or in Heaney’s case everything bad he has done. ‘Nosed’ suggested that the river is trying to avoid something in its way.
In the fourth stanza Heaney writes about how he stared the rats out, he had been scared of the rats in previous stanzas but now he was ready to face his fear, ‘I turned to stare’ he is looking his fear straight in the eye. Heaney has final over come his fear.
In the final stanza the quote ‘crossed the bridge’ is very strong it can mean a matter of things, but the one that stands out in my mind is the bridge form childhood to adulthood. After everything he has seen and done in his childhood he is finally past it all and is a man.
In this poem Heaney uses Enjambrement this was an excellent thing to put in this poem because it adds to the effect.
Furthermore to conclude my essay, I have to say that Heaney had quite a harsh upbringing living on the farm as we can see from ‘early purges’ because he has seen innocent animals die, he has been subjected to crude language by Dan Taggert. However in ‘An Advancement of learning’ it is a different story this poem goes on to tell us how Heaney over comes his fears. Heaney uses language very well; by saying ‘crossing the bridge’ he is saying that he is moving form childhood into adulthood. Heaney uses language well in both poems.
