In ‘Death of a Naturalist’, he not only has a physical confrontation with the frogs but an emotional one too: an acquisition of fear which is typical of childhood. The tone of the second section of the poem clearly conveys this emotion where he uses onomatopoeic words such as “slap and plop” and he describes the frogs as “The great slime kings.../gathered there for vengeance”. Any objective view certainly would not have used phrases like these, so it must be assumed that some personal emotion is involved and in this case, it is guilt. This is an instance of where, in Preoccupations, he describes himself having a “sense of crafting words” and delighting in the “verbal music”, and this is shown in his use of language to carry his thoughts.
This craft is derived mainly from his fascination with the sound and resonance of words themselves. He examines them, almost scientifically, in minute detail even to the point where he describes the actual mouth movements of the “Ulster accent” where the “tongue strikes the tangent of the consonant rather more than it rolls the circle of the vowel”. This intense observation, and hence understanding, allows him to choose the words that most efficiently transmit his thoughts and emotions to those reading, or more importantly listening to, his poetry.
Observation is a skill that Heaney acquired at a young age, and this is evident in the poetry his writes about his childhood. In poems such as ‘Digging’, he not only recorded events from his childhood visually but even recalls the “cold smell of potato mould”. His description of a spade is of “the court cuts of an edge” which is not just onomatopoeic: there is an small example of mimesis where Heaney forces a pause between “court” and “cut”, like the pause between the sound of a spade repeatedly entering soil. Perhaps it is this intense detail of something so long ago which engrains itself in Heaney’s mind that fascinates him, and allows him to express himself so vividly; to find his “voice” where he can put the feeling into his own words.
‘Digging’ is also a poem in which Heaney uses his childhood to relate past events to the present: in reconciling with his father about not following the family tradition of farming. In becoming a poet, he would break the generations of tradition in the Heaney family name and knows that it is associated with the land to the point where if you throw “Banagher” sand at your “team as they go on to the pitch” which has been lifted by a Heaney, “they will win the game”. Without appearing to flatter his family, ‘Digging’ conveys an admiration for his father and grandfather by writing about them in the third person and saying “By God, the old man could handle a spade.” He develops the admiration by relating these past childhood memories to the present and endeavouring to “dig” with his pen and to “let down a shaft into real life” in honour of his ancestors digging with their spades.
Whilst ‘Digging’ uses childhood almost as a device with which to explain a choice in Heaney’s life, ‘Death of a Naturalist’ conveys an experience which itself changes his life. It is understandable that he would be fascinated by the wide range of choices and experiences available to a child, through his own youth. His detailed observations of language and his childhood inevitably led him to become fascinated with both through their similarities and contrasts. Heaney’s childhood was an emotional development, as displayed in ‘Death of a Naturalist’ and language is a fundamental development of humans which separates them from the rest of nature. He, almost paradoxically, uses language to great effect whilst still remaining connected with the natural world via his family and his childhood.