Describe the qualities in the young Beowulf and later in Wiglaf, that make them stand out as warrior heroes
'What kind of men are you who arrive rigged out for combat in coats of mail?' Describe the qualities in the young Beowulf, and later in Wiglaf, that make them stand out as warrior heroes. Beowulf's sea journey and arrival into Denmark is expressed with potent dramatic splendour and magnitude. The immediate realisation of our being introduced to a character of great consequence is shared by the Shieldings' watchman and highlighted with Heaney's colourful adjectives and powerful imagery. Before Beowulf has even spoken or been addressed, we have heard that 'there was no one else like him alive / In his day he was the mightiest man on earth high-born and powerful.' Travelling on a boat 'loaded' with 'a cargo of weapons' and 'shining war-gear' is indicative of a feat these men are about to undertake. When the watchman witnesses their arrival, he is astonished most by Beowulf's physical appearance: 'Nor have I seen a mightier man at arms on this earth'. Throughout the poem this is a recurring theme as we are delivered countless images of his physical strength including his 'handgrip' 'harder' than that of 'any man on the face of the earth' when in battle with Grendel and his use of the sword ' so huge and heavy of itself only Beowulf could wield it in battle' during his combat with Grendel's mother. Such repetition of course was a key feature in the oral tradition of Anglo-Saxon
Death of naturalist - review
Death of naturalist This poem is a fertile mixture of imagery, sounds and an impression created by nature on people's mind. Heaney sensualises an outstanding fear of the physical wonders of the world. He vividly describes his childhood experience that precipitates his change as a boy from the receptive and protected innocence of childhood to the fear and uncertainty of adolescence. As he wonders along the pathways of salient discovery, Heaney's imagination bursts into life. The title of the poem is amusingly ironic - by a naturalist we would normally think of someone with expert scientific knowledge of living things and ecology. The poem 'Death of a naturalist' has quite a lot of emotional images because it's the poet's memory and he is reminiscing. There are a number of poetic devices to create an image. Firstly, the poet uses the metaphor 'in the heart of the town land' to add interest to the poem. He also uses languages like 'sweltered' and 'punishing sun' to convey to the reader the hot summers day Heaney remembers. Nature is also brought up in the poem by the metaphor 'bluebottles.' This creates a visual image of Heaney collecting frogspawn and also engages the reader. There is alliteration in the lines 'On shelves at school, and wait and watch' to create a calm and happy tone and a soft sound. Heaney also uses childish language, 'mammy' to create an image of
How do Muldoon and Heaney differ in their attitudes towards violence?
How do Muldoon and Heaney differ in their attitudes towards violence? Ireland is a naturally violent country because of the situation there at the moment. As Seamus Heaney said, 'Poetry is a world apart from violence'. Paul Muldoon and Seamus Heaney are two Northern Irish poets. Their poems bring across many different points about the difficult times the Irish have and also what actually happens in Ireland at these times. They have a great variety of showing this. We can see this from the poems that Heaney wrote, 'Trout' and 'Death of a Naturalist', and that Muldoon wrote, 'Anseo', 'Ireland' and 'Bran'. While understanding Ireland and studying these poems we have 'come to realise that it is a deadly place that contains the threat of violence in a seemingly innocent landscape.' This is backed up by the poem 'Ireland'. 'Ireland' is a poem which starts with a scene which initially seems innocent, but the truth is violent and dangerous. The poet sees a car parked in a well-chosen 'gap'. It may look like two lovers having a quiet evening out or maybe men trying to plant a bomb. The poet notices two people running away from the car but as he is at a distance he cannot see them. He sees the terrorist, not lovers, hurrying over the border and suddenly the reality is clear. It is a car bomb The causes of violence are illustrated in the poem 'Anseo'. The poem 'Anseo' is
Blackberry Picking vs. Ancient Photograph.
Blackberry Picking vs. Ancient Photograph Mirdza Abele The poem "Blackberry picking" is mainly about four things, which are picking blackberries, family tradition, life and death and childhood experiences. Referring to blackberry picking, Heaney describes blackberry picking using such words and combination of phrases that just by reading the poem it makes the reader think and feel as though he/she is there, picking berries with the writer. In other words Heaney makes us live out the experience of picking blackberries. The poet compares blackberries to life cycle and death. He manages that by referring to our senses, which are smell, taste, touch, sight and sound. He uses our senses to make us live out the blackberry picking, as well. As an example of him using our senses to get to the point he wants us to get it: "...juice was stinking too." This is referring to our smell sense. Heaney, using the senses, compares blackberries to a life cycle and to life and death. We can see that when he describes that and how the blackberries rot: "but when the bath was filled, we found a fur, a rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache." This sentence refers to death. However to be able to contrast the two main happening in life, Heaney, at the beginning of the poem describes how good are the blackberries: " Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it." The poet even puts very
Follower is a poem about the poets love and admiration for his father. It is also about the changes that occur between father and children as children move out from their parent's shadow.
Follower Follower is a poem about the poets love and admiration for his father. It is also about the changes that occur between father and children as children move out from their parent's shadow. In the first half of the poem the poet draws a vivid portrait of his father as he ploughs a field. The poet, as a young boy, follows his father as he goes about his work and, like most boys, he idolises his father and admires his great skill, 'An expert. He would set the wing and fit the bright steel - pointed sock'. In the poem, Heaney looks up to his father in a physical sense, because he is so much smaller than his father, but he also looks up to him in a metaphorical sense. This is made clear by the poet's careful choice of words. An example of this is in the lines, 'His eye narrowed and angled at the ground, mapping the furrows exactly.' These words effectively suggests his father's skill and precision. We are also told that young Heaney 'stumbled in his hob - nailed wake,' which brings to our mind a picture of the ploughman's heavy boots, the carefully ploughed furrow and the child's clumsy enthusiasm. The poet uses onomatopoeic words to capture the details of his father as he works the plough. At the end of the first stanza he describes him leading the team of plough-horses, instructing them with his "clicking tongue". In the second stanza his father guides the horses
Compare and contrast 'Death of a naturalist' and 'Catrin'
KMK(G)1 DANIELLE ROWLAND HALL CROSS SCHOOL 36250 Compare and contrast 'Death of a naturalist' and 'Catrin' In both poems, the writers reflect on childhood and change. Heaney looks back on his childhood and the change he took while growing up where as Clarke is reflecting on childhood as an adult, a mother and how she copes, and her views of having a child, and being in child birth. In Heaney's poem, Death of a Naturalist, he is reflecting on his childhood and the attitude he uses towards his childhood. The attitude he has changes during the poem, at first, in the first stanza, he looks back fondly at his childhood 'I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied specks to range on the window sills at home' (line11) 'But best of all there was the warm thick slobber' (line 8) This shows how much he likes nature and how much interest he has for it, how he even likes the 'thick, warm slobber'. The style and voice of this stanza is happy and childlike. We can tell it is childlike by the way it is written, using long sentences and the repetition of the word 'and', 'Miss Walls would tell us how the daddy frog was called a bullfrog and how he croaked and how the mammy frog laid hundreds of little eggs and this was frogspawn' (line 15) But in the second stanza it changes, the tone of the stanza is less happy; it is serious and uses many negative phrases 'Then one hot day when
Comment on Heaney's treatment of the theme of conflictand explore how it is used in the four collections - Explain whether his use of poetic devices varies according to his useof the theme.
Comment on Heaney's treatment of the theme of conflict and explore how it is used in the four collections. Explain whether his use of poetic devices varies according to his use of the theme. Throughout the anthology Heaney uses a number of themes several times in each of the collections. Conflict is the theme used most frequently ranging from international conflict to interpersonal conflict. Each of the poems from the different collections shares a number of characteristics for example the use of sensory language and the signs that Heaney is growing up. "Death of a Naturalist" is the second poem of the "Death of a Naturalist" collection and is a classic example of a poem with all of the common sense. On the first line there is the mention of "flax" which is a plant that is of course a part of nature. This is the first instance that nature is involved in this poem and closely interlinks it with other poems, especially from the "Death of a Naturalist" collection. There is a strong use of imagery throughout all the poems and this poem is no exception. "Green and heavy headed", this is describing the flax in the flax dam that he used to visit as a child. The structure of the poem is in two stanzas with a definite change between the two. The first section is the actual memory and how it happened and then the second section is where he sees the frogs copulating. The use of
Belfast Confetti - Ciaran Carson
Belfast Confetti - Ciaran Carson By Joshua Smith The author doesn't mention whether he thinks the bombing right or wrong, which is refreshing in a time when everyone has an opinion about the freedom of Ireland from England. The title is confusing, making the reader think that this is going to be about celebrations, and it turns out to be about a bomb. The use of punctuation words means there is a running theme through out the poem "raining exclamation marks...an asterisk on the map....hyphenated line....punctuated". A meaning that could be taken from this is that sentences are one of a few things that differ us from animals. The fact that he was "trying to complete a sentence in his head" speaks volumes about his state of mind at the time. It is odd that he has used (?) in the poem as a good poem shouldn't need to have unanswered questions at the end. The (?) are used for effect and also mean that he doesn't have to formulate an opinion about what's happening, an opinion that could upset those around him. The (?) also allow the reader to make up their own opinion. By saying "Saracen, Kremlin-2 mesh. Makrolon face-shields. Walkie-talkies", he gives the reader an inhuman picture of the army by depicting it as a collection of military equipment, intimidating in its coldness. The actual sound of the line too with the predominant consonant "k" and heavily fragmented lines
"Wintering Out" and "Bye-Child" by Heaney.
In "Wintering Out" Heaney goes through a number of changes, both mentally and physically. These changes can be explored through his poems. In "Bye-Child", Heaney talks about an illegitimate child. He talks about how Christianity deals with this child. Ireland, being a Christian country, frowns upon children being born before their parent's marriage. "Bye-Child" is about how a mother deals with her illegitimate child in order to stay a good Christian. - When the lamp glowed, a yolk of light in their back window, The child in the outhouse put his eye to the chink- The glowing of the lamp gives a feeling of warmth. However, the warmth is coming from inside the house and the child is in an outhouse. He looks out of a hole to see through to the house. This shows a sense of curiosity, as we feel in order to see the rest of the world. It is as though the inside of the house is like the rest big, wide world for him, as he has only ever seen the inside of the hen house. - Little henhouse boy, sharp-faced as new moons remembered, your photo still glimpsed like a rodent on the floor of my mind, Heaney addresses the little boy as "little henhouse boy" which makes him sound unwanted and like a nuisance. Because of the lack of light he has had, he has turned pale and skinny due to the lack of food. At this point Heaney begins to use animal imagery to describe the little boy trapped
Digging languageThe poem starts in the present tense. In the first line you find out that the poem is personal because of the word "my". The unusual simile "The squat pen rests, snug as a gun" is odd
Digging language The poem starts in the present tense. In the first line you find out that the poem is personal because of the word "my". The unusual simile "The squat pen rests, snug as a gun" is odd because guns are not thought of as snug In the second stanza the man hears a sound from "under his window." The poet uses onomatopoeia to describe the sound, which gives us a sense of hearing and being able to imagine the "rasping" sound. There is also alliteration with "spade sinks" and "gravely ground." The persona knows what the "rasping" sound is without even looking down, probably because he has got used to hearing it over the years. This is because sound is shown to trigger off memories in this poem. The third stanza begins with the reader being told what the noise was. It says that the father is working on the flowerbeds, which implies that the father is quite old because he only digs up flowers now and does not dig for potatoes anymore. Then there is a flashback to twenty years earlier, where the poem changes to past tense. The persona thinks of his father working on the fields digging for potatoes. It tells us that his father was very skilful and was probably an expert at digging because of the phrases "in rhythm" and "potato drills". The word "digging" pops us again at the end of the third stanza as it is at the end of the second. The word seems to haunt or irritate