Death of a Naturalist - Seamus Heaney Flashcards
context death of a naturalist
Seamus Heaney
born in lived in N Ireland
nature/romantics influenced his writing heavily
written during ‘the troubles’ - 2 distinct stanzas - innocence and violence
lost his brother while in school
structure/form Death of a Naturalist
Blank verse - signifies the childish nature
iambic pentameter - highlights the shift in tone
the two used together are representative of the freedom and order experienced in childhood
enjambment:
1st stanza - breathless excitement
2nd stanza - panic
‘bubbles
gargled delicately’ - oxymoron shows his innocent fascination at the beginning
‘strong gauze
of sound around the smell’ - the sensory imagery helps us feel his experience
‘gauze’ connotes a dressing of a wound - nature as healing at this point?
‘but best of
all was the warm thick slobber’ - the adjectives display how he takes delight in disgusting things - innocence
‘daddy’ and ‘mammy’
connotations of gentleness and protection.
repeated ‘and’
polysyndeton shows how his language has not evolved and his growing up was cut short - context (death of his brother)
2nd stanza has a semantic field of military imagery
‘rank’‘invaded’‘grenade’ - alludes to the conflict in N ireland
‘a coarse
croaking that i had not heard before’ - guttural alliteration shows how he know thinks of the frogs as disgusting. ironic because he has heard the croaking before but now has a different view.
‘loose necks
pulsed like sails’ - simile alludes to a flotilla - attacking
‘poised like
mud grenades, their blunt heads farting’ - he now feels repulsed by them
‘the great slime kings’
this juxtaposes the earlier descriptions of the frogs as ‘mammy’ and ‘daddy’ highlighting how the speaker has changed
‘the spawn would
clutch it’ - maybe it is symbolic of what he used to do to the spawn and now they are back for vengeance
