Critical Analysis of The Forge by Seamus Heaney

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Critical Analysis of The Forge by Seamus Heaney

‘The Forge’ is a sonnet with a clear division into an octave (the first eight lines) and a sestet (the final six lines). While the octave, apart from its initial reference to the narrator, focuses solely on the inanimate objects and occurrences inside and outside the forge, the sestet describes the blacksmith himself, and what he does.

Interestingly, the transition from the octave to the sestet is a run-on or enjambment containing one of the key metaphors of the poem, the anvil as altar:

Set there immovable: an altar
Where he expends himself in shape and music.
One effect of this is to enable us to experience the anvil or altar as a magical point of transition between the material and immovable world of objects and the fluid, musical world of human consciousness.

The rhyme scheme of the sonnet is: abba cddc efgfef, a departure from the standard Shakespearean (abab cdcd efef gg) or Petrarchan (abba abba cde cde) sonnet form. The unrhymed 11th line He leans out on the jam, recalls a clatter is perhaps the most striking feature of the rhyme scheme, and, combined with the poem’s second run-on, serves to emphasise the cacophony and disorder of the remembered horse-drawn carriages. The threefold full rhyme nose/rows/bellows gives a pleasing finality to the end of the poem, especially in contrast to other lines which tend more to half-rhyme (square/altar, dark/sparks).

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The metre of the poem is the standard iambic pentameter, but it is used flexibly, to good effect. For example in the very first line the first two feet begin with a long syllable (thus trochaic or dactylic rather than iambic), which has the effect of emphasising the important phrase All I know which frames the poem by suggesting the limits of the narrator’s perspective and knowledge (the narrator seems to be outside the forge: he sees the objects outside, and hears the sounds inside, but cannot see the anvil, and only sees the blacksmith when he leans out on ...

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The triumph of this analysis is that, after systematically examining the elements of this poem, the writer is able to draw them together again in one final proposition that links the sounds and sights of the forge, the mythical/religious themes and the process of poetic creation itself. Sentence and paragraph construction are effectively managed thoughout, with one exception. However, there is a strange omission of suitable marking of quotations which makes reading the essay a little difficult in parts. This may have arisen in the process of transferring the essay into its current form; for instance, the quotations may have been in italics that have reverted to standard font. Overall, this is a very successful essay. 5 stars