Examine the influence of Heaneys childhood upon his poetry

In the early sixties he wrote his first volume Death of a naturalist.

Analyzing four Heaney Poems

I have chosen Death of a naturalist, Follower, Digging and The early purges because I think they represent the influences that Heaneys childhood had on his poems.

Death of a naturalist was one of Heaneys’ first poems and was the title of his first volume. The poem symbolizes the innocence of childhood because he uses simple and uncomplicated language. The teacher in the poem is very patronizing and explains sex and mating in a very toned down way she said,                                                                                                ‘The daddy frog was called the bullfrog and how he croaked and how the mammy frog laid hundreds of little eggs and this was frogspawn’.

The early part of the poem is seen through the eyes of a child and as he is a child he didn’t recognize that when he took the frogspawn he was indeed taking the frogs offspring. The poem changes as Heaney grows up and sees what he is doing is wrong. In the second verse the language also changes it becomes much harsher and he uses a lot of onomatopoeia,       ‘The slap and plop’.

In the second verse the frogs are very threatening they are called,   ‘the slime kings , angry frogs and they poised like mud grenades’. The atmosphere is a lot more threatening as well ‘the air was thick with a bass chorus’.

The last sentence is the most important it said,                                ‘The slime kings were gathered there for vengeance and I knew that if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it’. I think at this point he sees that he had taken the frogs children and it would be like if the frogs stole him away from his mother and father.

My next poem is called Follower. This poem illustrates the close relationship between Heaney and his father and him reflecting on his childhood. When his father is working he said,                                                    ‘his shoulders globed like a full sail strung’ this shows strength, power and it conjures an image of the Greek mythology God Atlas. Heaney remarks on the skill of his father frequently,                                                                            ‘the sod rolled over without breaking’  and ‘An expert’. He does this because he wants to emphasize his point that his father was a skilled farmer. His father and his horse were like a team the classic situation of man and beast working together,                                                                                       ‘with a single pluck of reins, the sweating team turned round and back into the land’.

When his father was working Heaney was a nuisance,                         ‘I was a nuisance, tripping, falling. Yapping away’ but despite this his father carried him on his back as he worked. Heaney wanted to follow in his fathers footsteps and be a farmer,                                                                    ‘I wanted to grow up and plough, stiffen my arm’ I think he wanted to do this because he wanted to be like his father and carry on the tradition of farming.

In the last verse Heaney said,                                                            ‘But today it is my father who keeps stumbling behind me and will not go away’  this means that Heaney has surpass his fathers intellect and his dad can’t keep up with him.

My third poem is Digging. Again this poem is set in the countryside and is about his father digging. Heaney thought that it was his first real poem and he said that he felt for the first time he had done more than just made an arrangement of words and it sent a shaft of light into the country life. In the poem he has two choices the gun or the pen,                                              ‘The squat pen rest ; slug as a gun’ I think that he thinks he has been given a choice ether to influence people by force ‘the gun’ or to influence people with words ‘the pen’.

He uses a lot of sound, smell and touch,                                               ‘a clear rasping sound when the spade sinks into gravelly ground’. He speaks about his father and his grandfather and that he is the first in a new generation. Heaney admired his fathers skill,                                               ‘By God the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man’.

My last poem is Early Purges. This poem is set in the countryside when Heaney was a young boy growing up. The other character in the poem is Dan who was a farm hand. I think that Heaney was trying to show the harsh reality of farm life in this poem. He as very young when he had his first encounter with death,                                                                               ‘I was six when I first saw kittens drown’. Heaney uses a lot of negative sound in the poem,                                                                                       ‘soft paws scraping like mad but there tiny din was soon soused’. Dan’s reaction to this was,                                                                                      ‘sure its better for them now’ I think he said this to comfort Heaney but didn’t really believe it. This incident scared him at first but as he saw more and more things killed so he hardened to it,                                                ‘And now when shrill pups are drowned I just shrug , bloody pups. It makes sense’. Heaney thinks it makes sense because he now knows that in a well run farm pests must be kept down.

‘prevention of cruelty cuts ice in town’ He said this because town people don’t know what is needed to run a farm and think it is cruel and wrong to kill healthy animals.

Conclusion

I think Heaney’s childhood had a huge influence on his poetry because he writes a lot about life on the farm with his father. The poems that I have analyzed have all been written from his point of view when he was a child.

        I think that he wrote from a child’s point of view because when you are a child the world is still a mystery and even minor experiences can have a profound impact on your young life.