Death Of A Naturalist - Seamus Heaney

Question 1

Structure

Answer 1

2 stanzas - 1st stanza 21 lines, 2nd stanza 12 lines
Volta - line 22
No regular rhyme scheme

Question 2

Themes

Answer 2

Nature
Loss of innocence
Childhood to adolescence -life cycle

Question 3

Context

Answer 3

The poet grew up on a farm in rural Ireland, and was therefore familiar with wild life and insects

Question 4

All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.

Answer 4

Flax is a blue flowered plant that is often near peat soil and bog areas and a ‘flax-dam’ refers to where the plant accumulates in clumps. The poem begins abruptly, using what might be thought of as ‘unpoetic’ language, as in ‘festered’ and ‘sods’. The pace is deliberately slow, with alliterative ‘f’s in ‘flax’ and ‘festered’, and ‘h’s in ‘heavy headed’. ‘Weighed down by huge sods’ has elongated vowels. All of this creates an ominous undertone.

Question 5

Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately,

Answer 5

The poet uses onomatopoeic words throughout the poem to create strong impressions of the sounds. The sun is personified as ‘punishing’, an example of pathetic fallacy. The mood created is unsettling. ‘Gargled delicately’ is an oxymoron that highlights how counter-intuitive nature can be. As a child, Heaney found beauty in nature’s coarseness.

Question 6

Bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.

Answer 6

The buzzing of the bluebottles mingles with the smell of the flax to create an intense sensory experience, which has a strange, “gauzy”, flimsy beauty to it. The mix of sound, smell and texture is an example of synaesthesia

Question 7

There were dragon-flies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber

Answer 7

He juxtaposes adjectives, ‘warm’ and ‘thick’ with ‘slobber of frogspawn.’ The former has connotations of safety and comfort, whereas “thick slobber” paints an unpleasant image. The frogspawn signifies innocence but it is also linked to reproduction and puberty. The first stanza portrays the fascination of children with the gruesome side of nature.

Question 8

Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks. Here, every spring,

Answer 8

This conveys the perverse delight of boys for messiness. If taken literally ‘clotted water’ is an oxymoron, suggesting that the frogspawn has a jelly-like consistency

Question 9

I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied
Specks to range on window-sills at home,

Answer 9

It shows the narrator taking some frogspawn and watching it grow in a jar; hence the title “naturalist”. He is portrayed as innocently curious as he fails to connect his observations with the sexual nature of the reproductive process

Question 10

On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst into nimble-
Swimming tadpoles

Answer 10

The pace begins to quicken as to describe the tadpole stage. Note the compressed ‘nimble-swimming’ and the excitement conveyed through the alliterative ‘w’s in the phrase ‘wait and watch’. There is also the expressive, plosive ‘b’ in burst

Question 11

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. You could tell the weather by frogs too,
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.

Answer 11

The childlike speech takes us deeper inside the flashback to Heaney’s childhood. His schoolteacher taught him how frogs reproduce, but made the process sound a little cuter than it actually is. The sexual nature of the process is side-stepped, and the teacher moves coyly on to how they change colour in different conditions. There is a rhythmic flow to this section, where Miss Walls’ speech is mimicked.

Question 12

Whys

Answer 12

Heaney explores the inevitable transition from childhood to adulthood, where the loss of childhood innocence is often tinged with a sense of sadness and loss.
Heaney exposes how a tragic experience, like the sudden death of his younger brother Christopher in a road traffic accident, can mar childhood memories and completely change your outlook on life.

Question 13

Then one hot day when fields were rank

Answer 13

The speaker now changes to the older Heaney. There is a sharp contrast between his perspective as a child, fascinated and curious about the natural world, and his later attitude. The second stanza signifies passing time, with it now probably being summer again. The ‘hot day’ seems oppressive and the ‘rank fields’ create an unpleasant atmosphere.

Question 14

With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs

Answer 14

The aggression of the frogs and the maturation of the adolescent poet form the essence of the 2nd stanza. The realistic, brutal language used in the second stanza completely juxtaposes to the childish language of the first. Both the frog spawn and the boy are growing up; both in a phase of aggression and cynicsm. The world is now hostile, not benign.

Question 15

Invaded the flax-dam;

Answer 15

The military imagery reinforces the idea of aggression. His new perception has damaged something he had seen as beautiful.

Question 16

I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before.

Answer 16

There is something secretive and unsettling about the speaker ‘ducking’ under hedges. The open-natured child seems to have become an introverted, suspicious adolescent. The ‘coarse croaking’ is alliterative and onomatopoeic. The mood has changed; the sweet child-like world is now far more threatening.

Question 17

The air was thick with a bass chorus.

Answer 17

‘The air was thick’ sounds threatening. The word ‘bass’ is a homophone, meaning ‘low-pitched’, but also ‘crude’ or ‘unrefined’. ‘Bass’ and ‘gross’ in the next line are consonantly rhymed.

Question 18

Right down the dam gross-bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:

Answer 18

The deep sound is coming from frogs sitting on the peat sods. “Gross” is a pun, an adjective that means “large”, but also “rude” and “disgusting.” The frogs’ necks inflate as they croak, repelling the young observer. These descriptive words are vivid and conjure an unpleasant picture. The consonants are hard and sharp, whilst there are also hissing, sibilant ’s’s. ‘Gross’, ‘loose’ and ‘pulse’ are consonantly rhymed. Most of the words are single syllables, and if read aloud the two lines are slow and ponderous. Heaney’s poetic skill has created an effectively unsettling picture.

Question 19

The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran.

Answer 19

The language here is that of disgust and fear, in sharp contrast to the speaker’s fascination in the first stanza. But notice the relish with which the adult poet evokes this “obscene” vision. “Slap,” “plop,” “mud grenades,” “farting” – the words and images are deliberately ridiculous, evoking memories of childhood delight at ‘naughty words’. From a distance, both we and the poet get to have it both ways: we’re entertained at the boy’s disgust and unnerved ourselves. Note that the sentence length is shortening and the pace quickening as the end of the poem approaches. ‘I sickened, turned, and ran’ is a dramatic climax, with its triplet of action-verbs.

Question 20

The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

Answer 20

The young speaker was deeply disturbed, assuming that the frogs knew that he had already taken some of their young. He thought that they were out for revenge, and would attack him if he touched the spawn again. The ‘slime-kings’ conveys the idea of dominance in ‘kings’ and revulsion in ‘slime’. This stanza conjures up war imagery suggesting an avenging army ‘gathered there’ to emphasise the speaker’s sense of danger. In response to his fear, the boy turns and runs away, his innocent curiosity in nature quelled. The ‘naturalist’ in him is, for the moment at least, dead.