Seamus Heaney had a Roman Catholic upbringing in a rural area of Northern Ireland. How does his poetry reflect his background?

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Seamus Heaney had a Roman Catholic upbringing in a rural area of Northern Ireland. How does his poetry reflect his background?

Heaney’s poetry is able to reflect his background by his use of language and the technique he expresses his experiences. I will cover his background into three sections: his childhood, the community and his reflections.

I will start by looking at his feelings and experiences in the poem ‘Death of a Naturalist’. The poet remembers the time when he was a young child. He saw the reality of what frogs were really like in the outdoors compared to what was taught in school. In school, the frogs are described like a typical teacher talking to young pupils. It is very patronising and cosy hiding the fact that they are ‘rank’, off-putting and sickening in certain ways. For e.g. “…the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked” and “ Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting”. They are described as being like grenades due to their size, shape, colour and the “scary” croaking noises that the creature makes. It was a new experience for him for he had not heard the noises before,“ to a coarse croaking that I had not heard before”. He did not feel in the right situation and it was like he had never felt like that before. During his experience, he felt insecure, anxious and self-doubting. He puts himself down for he blames himself for the “obscene threats” the frogs were giving him.

His use of language is able to quickly adjust the mood from a pleasant school setting to a horrid, smelly and repellent atmosphere. Heaney understood the straightforward and simplistic teachings at school but is bewildered and scared when he approaches the frogs. The poem starts calm and warm. It’s like a smooth and gentle beginning but near to the end the atmosphere all of a sudden changes. The finish illustrated how he feared for what was in the pond. He delivers his message very effectively. He says an unequivocal word in the sentence; “… and I knew that if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.” He knew that it would clutch his hand showing how positive and definite he was feeling. The experience had so much impact on Heaney altering his emotions before the incident occurred.

The title is very striking and ironic. The definition of a naturalist is someone who is an expert in natural history. Heaney was learning nature from direct observation but this stopped him from ever becoming a naturalist due to the fact that he found it a nightmare. Hence the word “Death”

The poem is done with unrhymed iambic pentameter lines. The use of onomatopoeia is very frequent such as: “slap and plop”, “farting” and “gargled”. The continuous, repulsive words help bring the poem to life and show how terrifying his experience was. E.g. “rotted”, “festered”, “slobber” and “slime kings”.

In the first section, the poet shows that he has a scientific interest. This is shown by the way he uses the technical names to call the frogs e.g. “bullfrog” and “frogspawn” rather than the patronizing words “daddy” and “mammy” from the teacher.

The second section is like vengeance and a punishment in the eyes of the young poet. Heaney possibly never got past the simple idea that the frogs were not just “mammy” or “daddy” frogs. The teacher presents the amphibians as if they were people, which is known as anthropomorphism.

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Heaney uses words that we would not expect to see in poetry, and he presents nature as the very opposite of beautiful. He has the ability to provide us with his feelings and emotions very effectively. In ‘Mid-Term Break’ he is able to give the feelings of others and not just himself. The title itself “Mid-Term Break” suggests a holiday. However, this “break” as Heaney puts it, is shattered from the death of his little infant brother.

He had to wait in boredom and listen to the sound of a bell tolling solemnly. The “knelling,” suggests that a funeral has ...

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