Death of a naturalist Flashcards
Summary
The poem describes the relationship of a child with nature, as their excitement and fascination is replaced with terror and disgust and their love for nature and the naturalist part of them dies.
Context
- Grew up in rural Northern Ireland on his family’s farm - mother worked in linen mills
- His younger brother died at age 4
Structure/form
- Alliteration is used at the start of the poem with ‘heavy headed’ and ‘flax…festered’ which conveys the childish excitement through the repeated sounds. It could be said to create a nursery-rhyme like tone, reflecting the youth of the child.
- Poem begins by describing the process of retting however technical term isn’t used which show the child’s fascination with the actual processes of nature, not the science behind it. This absence of scientific terms and use of childish language establish the innocent outlook of the child and highlights their naivety.
- First stanza uses childlike language (‘mammy’ ‘daddy’ ‘jampotfuls’) to convey the naivety and innocence of narrator, whereas the second stanza uses lots of military language (‘invaded’ ‘mud grenades’) showing the change in the narrator as they have lost their innocence.
- Enjambments used a lot in the first stanza to communicate the excitement of the child.
- First stanza has a mood of passion and fascination but the second has one of fear and terror.
Themes
- Nature
- Change
‘Death of a Naturalist’
- A naturalist studies nature and living things, therefore there is a contrast between this idea and the idea of death that is the topic of the poem.
- The death is a metaphorical one, describing the loss of innocence and potentially childhood - which features commonly in Heaney’s poem potentially due to the loss of his younger brother.
‘flax-dam festered’/’heart’/’rotted’
- The words ‘festered’ and ‘rotted’ both relate to death and decay, therefore this could be Heaney foreshadowing the the death of the narrator’s innocence.
- By including negative parts of nature in the first stanza, Heaney could also be suggesting that the negative aspects of nature were always present, however the narrator’s childish outlook on life prevented them from noticing. This establishes that the change later in the poem is not one of the child’s environment getting worse or more menacing, but the child’s own personality changing and innocence being lost, which in turn causes them to view nature and the world in a less positive way.
- The noun ‘heart’ stresses the importance of the flax-dam to the narrator and in extension the importance of nature in the narrator’s life.It shows that at the start of the poem nature and man are living symbiotically.
‘gargled delicately’/’best of all was the warm thick slobber’
- There is an oxymoron in the phrase ‘gargled delicately’ as gargling is quite a rough guttural sound and not typically something that would be considered delicate. This shows that the child finds pleasure in all parts of nature, regardless of how repulsive they may seem.
- The elements of nature that the narrator likes ‘best’ are the disgusting ones, establishing a clear fascination in the repulsive parts of nature
‘strong gauze of sound around the smell’
-The sounds provide a protective barrier between the disgusting smell and the child. This phrase suggest that at this point in the poem the child is shielded from directly experiencing the most unpleasant parts of nature due to his innocence.
‘and wait and watch’/’and how he croaked and how the mammy frog’
-The alliteration and repetition of ‘and’ shows how absorbed the narrator is in their passion as they observed the frogspawn for hours. The repetition also portrays the enthusiasm and excitement of the child.
‘The word ‘mammy’ conveys not only childishness, but the narrator’s Irish origin as it is a word typically used by Irish children, rather than the word mummy. This is because Heaney grew up in Ireland and this establishes the poem as personal.
‘In rain.’
- Rain has quite negative connotations, this hints at the shift in mood the poem will have.
- The short line abruptly ends the stanza, signalling the volta in the poem and possibly foreshadowing the abrupt metaphorical death in the next stanza.
‘Then one hot day’
- The use of the connective ‘Then’ marks a change in time to a specific event.It also marks a change in tone from one of excitement and youthfulness to one more somber, suggesting the poem has discarded its own youthful innocence like the narrator.
- The phrase shows that the setting of the poem has not changed as the ‘hot’ weather is echoed in the first stanza - it is the narrator who has changed not nature.
‘invaded’/’cocked’/’poised like mud grenades’
-Heaney uses military language in the second stanza to convey the way in which the narrator feels threatened and scared by nature. The military language creates a semantic field of war and suggests conflict between the speaker and frogs. This contrasts the idea of symbiosis between man and nature introduced in the first stanza.
‘rank’/’coarse croaking’
-There is a pun on the word ‘rank’ as it suggests ranks in the military but also describes the repulsive smell of the cow dung. Unlike in the first stanza where sound served to protect the narrator from the smells, in the second stanza there is an absence of protection and therefore the narrator has to smell the stench of the fields. The adjective ‘coarse’ suggests the sound is perceived as harsh and unpleasant by the narrator. Heaney transforms the protective nature of the sound into an unsettling presence by making the ‘coarse croaking’ stand out with the use of alliteration, showing how instead of being comforted and shielded by the sounds of nature, the narrator is made uncomfortable and nervous. This shows how the narrator’s innocence prevented them from having to truly experience and be intimated by the more disgusting parts of nature, however that has now been lost, and with it their enthusiasm and fascination with nature.
‘air was thick with a bass chorus’/’slap and plop’
- The air being described by the adjective ‘thick’ shows that the narrator is suffocating under the threatening presence of the frogs.
- Their croaking being described as a ‘chorus’ implies that the frogs are unified in their anger at the narrator for stealing their children and are ganging up on him. This shows how the narrator perceives nature as threatening and fearsome now and continues the idea of sound being scary rather than protective like in the first stanza.
- Heaney uses onomatopoeia through the words slap and plop to emphasise how the sounds of the frogs is perceived as scary by the child, further highlighting how sound has changed from conforming to menacing due to the change in the narrator.
‘I sickened, turned, and ran.’
-A tricolon is used and this quick succession of verbs highlights the narrator’s reaction of terror. The short sentence is very abrupt, mirroring his hasty exit and greatly contrasts the enthusiastic way in which the child would spend hours observing nature and the tadpoles. The very brief description also contrasts the first stanza of the poem which provided vivid detailed descriptions of nature. This shows how the narrator is no longer fascinated by nature and its workings.
