Seamus Heaney
Heaney grew up in the countryside with a boy called Dan Taggart. "I was six when I first saw the kittens drown. Dan Taggart pitched them, 'the scraggy wee shits'.
Dan and Seamus grew up in the Irish countryside. Dan liked to kill the animals and said that it was because they were pests and had to be dealt with accordingly. " 'Prevention of cruelty' talk cuts ice in a town where they consider death unnatural, but on well-run farms pests have to be kept down. He is saying that it's all well and good the towns people saying that killing is wrong but they are pests that kill their animals and so have to be stopped from doing so, meaning that they have to be killed to stop them from eating their livestock.
Seamus was not a killer as he thought it wrong of Dan to kill the animals, "Suddenly frightened, for days I sadly hung round the yard, watching the three sogged remains turn mealy and crisp as old summer dung". Where Seamus lived there were many wells as he describes in his poem 'Personal Helicon'. " As a child, they could not keep me from wells and old pumps with buckets and windlasses. I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells of waterweed, fungus and dank moss. One in a brickyard, with a rotted board top. I savored the rich crash when a bucket plummeted down at the end of the rope. So deep you saw no reflection in it. In this he is showing how much he is fascinated with wells and that there are many different types of wells. He also mentioned that he liked the sound of when the bucket "plummeted down at the end of the rope" which shows that he was very inquisitive about wells.
Seamus Heaney shows he grew up in a different time and place by saying at the beginning of Personal Helicon "As a child..." and at the end he says "Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime, to stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme to see myself, to set the darkness echoing. He is saying that it was acceptable when he was a child but now he is an adult it is not.
He did not have many friends as he only mentions on, Dan Taggart, a suspicious sort of ...
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Seamus Heaney shows he grew up in a different time and place by saying at the beginning of Personal Helicon "As a child..." and at the end he says "Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime, to stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme to see myself, to set the darkness echoing. He is saying that it was acceptable when he was a child but now he is an adult it is not.
He did not have many friends as he only mentions on, Dan Taggart, a suspicious sort of character who liked killing animals for fun and to stop them being pests. "I was six when I first saw kittens drown. Dan Taggart pitched them, 'the scraggy wee shits', into a bucket" and "Until I forgot them. But the fear came back when Dan trapped big rats, snared rabbits, shot crows or, with a sickening tug, pulled old hens' necks." This shows how ruthless Dan was and that Seamus was a friend of his. As this was Seamus's only friend I find this unusual for a six-year-old as when you are that age you make friends with anyone.
Heaney's personality in the poems show that he was lonely when he was younger and that he turned to wells, blackberry picking and seeing the animals being killed by Dan Taggart to make up for not having many friends. He seems lively and likes it when the blackberry season starts but hates it when it finishes. "As a child they could not keep me from wells..." "Late August, given heavy rain and sun for a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot among others, red, greens, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summers blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for picking" This shows that he liked the blackberry season, August. "We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre. But when the bath was filled we found a fur, a rat-Grey fungus, glutting on our cache. The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush, the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour. I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair that all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot. Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not." Here he is saying that they put them in a bath and try to preserve them but to no avail, they always go off quickly. When the poems start he is happy but at the end he is sad as something has died/gone rotten/ too childish too do any more. He says that he is too old to look at wells now and that he does not care about animals any more. "Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime, to stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some spring is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme to see myself, to set the darkness echoing" and "Still, living displaces false sentiments and now, when shrill pups are prodded to drown I just shrug, 'Bloody pups'." This shows that as he has grown older he does not care about what he loved to do in his childhood.
Seamus Heaney as an adult does not like the same things as he used to. "I just shrug, 'Bloody pups'." Showing that he does not care about the dogs being killed, but he did when he was younger so this shows a big change in hi views on life. These events have no significance to him now as he has moved on. The wells, blackberry picking and animals dying, which used to make up for lack of friends, he does not need anymore as he has many new friends, with which to occupy himself with and these things probably do not worry him any more. I think that Seamus Heaney chose to write about hid burgeoning sexuality as a normal reader would simply not see the deeper meaning to the poem just what they read, but for an intelligent person who can see the underlying meaning to a poem or a piece of English. which has been written with one, it is satisfying and a good poem for them. One, which they may come back to many, times to re-read it. Also it was not considered right that children or adults should be reading about sex, as it was a sort of 'Taboo'. In doing this he could get away with it, as many would not notice this and those that could wold keep it to themselves.
I think that Seamus Heaney chose the title 'Death of a Naturalist', as that is what has happened to him in his poems and so is a fitting title to his poems. " Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme to see myself, to set the darkness echoing" This is saying that he was once a strong animal lover who hated them being killed but is now not involved in them and does not care any more.
