mossbawn:sunlight

Question 1

what is mossbawn

Answer 1

•mossbawn is the family home where heaney grew up, a place that was for him, as home is to all children, the centre of the world and source of all energy and life

Question 2

who was mary heaney

Answer 2

•his aunts whom he had special affection for
•she represents the old secure, stable way of life, a sense of community and traditional rural values

Question 3

the poet created a zone of what

Answer 3

•created a timelsss zone of slow days, domestic ritual, natural and human warmth, and companionable silence

Question 4

when are we taken back to

Answer 4

•taken back to childhood, pictured here as the golden age of innocence and security

Question 5

what are the values in the poem

Answer 5

•the value of unspectacular routine work (“Now she dusts the board/with a goose’s wing”)
•the practice of simple culinary skills (“her hands scuffled/over the bakeboard”)
•the routine of a lifestyle pared down to its essentials of bread, water and love

Question 6

these bare essentials are imbued with

Answer 6

•a sense of muster, a sense of sacramental, suggesting a religious simplicity of life: the water is “honeyed”, “the scone rising” and “here is love”

Question 7

family feeling is important here, love grows out of

Answer 7

•simple shared domestic tasks, love flourishes in an ordinary, unspectacular setting, among ordinary, unglamorous people (“broad-lapped,/with whitened nails/and measling shins”), flowering in the silent spaces between people

Question 8

love is associated with the simplest of food staples

Answer 8

•lurking in the life giving meal, unspectacular (“a tinsmith’s scoop”), yet vital

Question 9

values of silence and peace are also stressed

Answer 9

•”sunlit absence”
•”each long afternoon”

Question 10

all these values are found by

Answer 10

•reaching back to a premodern time
•all props in the scene suggest an earlier age: the pump in the yard,a griddle cooling, the reddening stove, a goose’s wing, the meal bin

Question 11

they’re rural values, born of

Answer 11

•a simple life. yet they’re made to appear poignantly appealing, offering an ideal way of living

Question 12

atmosphere of

Answer 12

•warmth, serenity and quiet vitality

Question 13

how is the atmosphere achieved

Answer 13

•primarily through use of imagery and symbolism. images of sunlight & heat predominate (“a sunlit absence”, “the sun stood/like a griddle cooling/against the wall,”)

Question 14

the “helmeted” pump is

Answer 14

•both actual and symbolic, a soldier on entry duty protecting the household

Question 15

the pumps water

Answer 15

•is mysteriously transformed (“honeyed”)

Question 16

the pump serves as an

Answer 16

•icon or symbol for the subterranean energies of the place & people

Question 17

the sun too is captured by

Answer 17

•the scene, reduced to domestic proportions (“like a griddle cooling”)

Question 18

bread and water are also a symbol of

Answer 18

•life
•the alliterative language (helmeted, heated, honeyed) creates a melodic flow that also helps to build this atmosphere of “mellow fruitfulness”

Question 19

heaney himself is reported as saying it was

Answer 19

•intended to be a description of the experience of a fœtus in the womb

Question 20

what kind of energy is in the poem

Answer 20

•a quiet energy, achieved partly through the style of verse
•a great deal is packed into these very short lines

Question 21

the resulting enjabment

Answer 21

•(not just from one line to the next but also one verse to the next) created a sense of contained energy

Question 22

the erratic activities and pause in the aunts baking ritual contribute to

Answer 22

•the sense of restlessness
•”now she dusts the board”, “now sits”, “here is a space”