Death of a Naturalist - Stanza 1

Question 1

flax-dam festered

Answer 1

• alliteration draws attention to main idea

- flax dam is a metaphor for the speaker’s innocence

Question 2

punishing sun

Answer 2

• unpleasant word choice
• shows child’s enjoyment and innocence - he is shielded and protected
• personification

Question 3

huge sods

Answer 3

• long vowel sounds

- slow sentence makes reader stop and watch like the child

Question 4

strong gauze of sound around the smell

Answer 4

• sibilance mimics sound of nature

Question 5

but best of all was the warm thick slobber

Answer 5

• superlative shows it is his favourite part
• frogspawn is a metaphor for his youth and angry frogs are adolescence
• unpleasant word choice of slobber

Question 6

fill jampotfuls of the jellied specks

Answer 6

• alliteration can highlight the delight
• specks symbolise new beginnings and birth
• speaker is leaving youth

Question 7

on shelves at school, and wait and watch until

Answer 7

• iambic pentameter

- speaker impatient

Question 8

miss walls would tell us

Answer 8

• vivid memory

- left a mark on the speaker

Question 9

fattening dots burst

Answer 9

• onomatopoeia

- experiencing nature first hand

Question 10

daddy frog, mammy frog

Answer 10

• colloquial

- speaker is naïve and protected

Question 11

and how he croaked and how the mammy frog

Answer 11

• childlike story telling

- croak references voice breaking

Question 12

laid hundreds of little eggs and this was/ Frogspawn

Answer 12

• enjambment and caesura work together to make us stop in awe like the speaker
• capital letter highlights importance of the lesson
• foreshadows loss of innocence

Question 13

In rain

Answer 13

• meter change
• enjambment
• pathetic fallacy
• foreshadowing
  combine to highlight server change in mood the poem