Compare and contrast Heaney’s and Wordsworth’s poems about a similar experience in nature, showing the influence of the contexts in which they were writing.

Authors Avatar
Compare and contrast Heaney's and Wordsworth's poems about a similar experience in nature, showing the influence of the contexts in which they were writing.

Although both poems, Heaney's Blackberry Picking and Wordsworth's Nutting, display fundamentally different attitudes toward nature, they also contain similar ideas. Wordsworth being a poet of the Romantic Movement, his poem conveys the qualities of this genre. Romanticism appreciates the power of nature as a pure and divine force, and believes that adults should return to a child-like susceptibility in order to become closer to it. Heaney's poem, although about a similar experience in nature, rejects the idealism and reverence given to nature in Nutting. Although still principally an appreciation of nature, it also portrays a more realistic, threatening side to it. Where the Romantics enthused about a return to childhood innocence, Heaney's naturalism is expressed through his poem as a process of maturation and therefore a loss of innocence.

An obvious difference between the poems is the ages of their main characters. Heaney's is told from a child's perspective, while Wordsworth's deals with nature from an adult's point of view. The Romantics were of the ideology that, in order to be truly in touch with nature, a return to this aforementioned child-like state was necessary. They also, however, believed the peasants and lower classes to be close with nature,

"Low and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that condition...the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature"(Preface to The Lyrical Ballads)

The reverence given to the lower rural classes in Wordsworth's poem fits our expectation of Romantic writing. This stems from the revolutionary changes that were occurring at the time. In the French Revolution, the monarchy and aristocrats had been overthrown, and the lower classes exalted and seen as pure.
Join now!


But contrary to Romantic opinion, the child in Blackberry Picking is a witness to the aforementioned reality of nature- its death and decay;

"- It wasn't fair,

That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot."

This portrayal of nature's eventual decay is also indicated in the title of Heaney's anthology, Death of a Naturalist. A naturalist is someone who understands and appreciates nature, in the same way a child does. Therefore, the title connotes to the death of his innocence, his realisation of a more threatening aspect to nature.

At the beginning of the ...

This is a preview of the whole essay