In contrast to this, In Mrs. Tilscher’s Class is set in a classroom, and childhood innocence is portrayed by learning, ’Mrs Tilscher chanted the scenery’. Senses such as taste, hearing and touch are used too ‘You could travel up the Blue Nile with your finger, tracing the route while Mrs Tilscher chanted the scenery’. This is describing what happening is, and this description allows the reader to relate to the poem. Children laugh, and have fun in a different environment to that of Death of a Naturalist. The children feel safe, and this safety is presented by Duffy saying ‘Brady and Hindley faded, like the faint, uneasy smudge of a mistake’. Brady and Hindley were child kidnappers in the time of Duffy’s childhood, and this suggests that in the classroom the power of learning and the positive, comfortable environment with a steady routine helped children to be innocent instead of having to worry about the ‘real world’, and that horrors like these could be smudged away, like a mistake in an exercise book. Duffy uses a simile to describe the feel of the classroom to the reader ‘the classroom glowed like a sweet shop’, and uses this in conjunction with other senses, such as ‘sugar paper’ and ‘the scent of a pencil slowly, carefully, shaved’. These senses further bring memories to the reader, and absorb the reader into the poem. Emotion also plays a part, ‘Mrs Tilscher loved you’ suggests a homely place, somewhere to feel important, and indeed ‘this was better than home’ could represent this.
The first two stanzas of In Mrs Tilscher’s Class represent this childhood innocence, and to an extent, so does the first stanza of ‘Death of a Naturalist’, but in the first stanza of Death of a Naturalist, changes begin to occur. Where there was frogspawn at the start of the poem, there are frogs by the end of the first stanza, and this change is a childhood memory that serves as a reminder of change and the immature ‘growing up’ that everyone goes through. In the third stanza of In Mrs Tilscher’s Class, the change from frogspawn to frog is used by Duffy as well, and this change is also effective in conveying the idea of growing up. In the third stanza of In Mrs Tilscher’s Class, the change starts to appear, as ‘tadpoles changed from commas into exclamation marks’ and as children follow frogs away from the lunch queue, where they are meant to be, Duffy could be suggesting that the frogs are now leading the children away from their childhood innocence. However, the main event when innocence is lost in Mrs Tilscher’s Class is ‘A rough boy told you how you were born. You kicked him, but stared at your parents, appalled, when you got back home’. This blunt introduction to the real world is the main turning point of the poem, and acts as a pivot for the last part of the poem, in the same way that Death of a Naturalist uses the frog incident.
In the second stanza of Death of a Naturalist, unpleasant words are used again, such as ‘the fields were rank’ and ‘their blunt heads farting’. The loss of innocence in this stanza is settled around one event, when Heaney realises that all of these fun and interesting things in the first stanza are actually horrible. Mud, which was portrayed as fun in the first stanza, is now ‘mud grenades’. This simile suggests war, and is an insight into Heaney’s childhood in Northern Ireland, in a war torn environment. Onomatopoeias are used extensively throughout the poem, including ‘The slap and plop were obscene threats’. This part of the poem is the moment when Heaney started to realise the serious, violent goings on around him, instead of not noticing them through a blindfold of innocence. Heaney finds something new ‘I ducked through hedges to a coarse croaking that I had not heard before’. As single frogs, Heaney had not seen them as nasty before, but as a group, he sees them not from an innocent child’s eyes, but from a different point of view.
The end of both poems signifies that childhood innocence has been lost, and that memories of childhood change from blissful to impatient in In Mrs Tilscher’s Class. In the fourth and last stanza of In Mrs Tilscher’s Class, words such as ‘feverish’, ‘untidy’, ‘tangible’, heavy’ and ‘impatient’ are used to create a memory where Duffy is now ‘impatient to be grown’, and ‘sexy sky’ suggests the nagging reminder of what she had been told by the rough boy is still there, as well as being reference to the sexuality of Duffy in later life. Reports are handed out, more of a grown up schooling idea, as infant schools don’t have reports, and pressure on Duffy is introduced, ‘under the heavy sky’. To finish the poem, pathetic fallacy is used for effect, and to symbolise the memory of that point onwards in Duffy’s life. After the frog incident in Death of a Naturalist, Heaney runs, sickened by the sight of the ‘slime kings’, and vengeance is mentioned, as if the pressures of later life have surfaced, and are now chasing him, very much similarly to In Mrs Tilscher’s class. Heaney is running away from his childhood innocence and the innocent memories he looks back on, and this contrasts to Duffy. The last line of Death of a Naturalist ‘That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it’ suggests that Heaney doesn’t want to look back on his childhood, that he now understands the world for what it really is, and that he is no longer shrouded by innocence. There is a switch of roles from the first stanza, when Heaney was collecting frogspawn, to where he feels intimidated by the frogs.
In conclusion, both ‘Death of a Naturalist’ and ‘Mrs Tilscher’s Class’ describe the ending of childhood innocence, using different methods and techniques to engage the reader. They both start by describing how they as children were innocent, but their innocence is lost as the poems go on, with both poets changing the tone and rhythm from fairly ‘relaxed’ and ‘happy’ to worrying about both the future and the present, and realising what life really is. In ‘Midterm Break’ by Seamus Heaney, his four year old brother passes away, and ‘Death of a Naturalist’ shows similarities to this with the fear and worry that is portrayed at the end of the poem. ‘Blackberry Picking’ by Seamus Heaney shows that nothing good lasts for long, as the picked blackberries rot soon after picking, and this shows similarities to ‘Death of a Naturalist’, where the innocence of childhood cannot last forever. In ‘Before You Were Mine’ by Carol Ann Duffy, similarities to ‘In Mrs Tilscher’s Class’ are shown, as there is a sense of looking back on a life that was happy. Also, the poem is looking back on two innocent lives, herself in ‘In Mrs Tilscher’s Class’, and her mother’s in ‘Before You Were Mine’.
