Nature Cluster

Question 1

DOAN Context

Answer 1

Heaney grew up in rural Ireland, on his family farm. Wrote about nature a lot.
His brother was killed in a road accident when he was little, and he was quite young.
Some points in the poem reference to the Irish Civil War.

Question 2

DOAN Title

Answer 2

Metaphorical death + A naturalist is someone who studies nature…

Significant of how he loses the passion for nature…

Question 3

DOAN Start

Answer 3

“All year the flax dam festered” — sets a tone of ‘rotting and decay’, foreshadowing an exploration of darker aspects of nature

“Bubbles gargled delicately” — Oxymoron, children fascinated with disgusting things, relates to passion and fascination.

“The bluebottles wove a strong gauze of sounds around the smell” — Nature is alive and thriving, persona is fascinated.

Question 4

DOAN Middle

Answer 4

“Wait and watch” — child is impatient, alliteration to show the impatience

“until the fattening dots burst into nimble swimming tadpoles” — Explosive imagery, nature is thriving and full of energy

“And” — repetition, shows child’s excitement

“……..in rain” (volta) — ends with a melancholy image, foreshadowing a shift in mood

Question 5

DOAN End

Answer 5

“Then one hot day….” (volta) — signals a shift in mood and time

“Angry frogs invaded the flax dam” (Irish troubles) + mention of “mud grenades” — war imagery and terminology, lexical field of attack and threat

“Coarse croaking” … “slap and plop were obscene threats” — alliteration, plosive sounds, possibly relates to violent sounds and imagery of war OR the intimidation and hesitation of the persona

Question 6

To Autumn Context

Answer 6

Keats is a Romantic poet obsessed with nature. He was walking along the River Ithchen during autumn, which was the inspiration for this poem. He was also terminally ill with TB, so coming to terms with his death?

Question 7

To Autumn Title

Answer 7

An ode “To Autumn”, personifying Autumn

Love and appreciation for autumn

Question 8

To Autumn Start

Answer 8

“Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness!” — alliteration of soft letters, but use of punctuation of excitement and celebratory tone.

“The vines that round the thatch eaves run…” Thatch eaves are part of a roof. Shows the symbiotic relationship between man and nature. Theme of dependency.

Words such as, “swell”,”plump”,”budding”,”fill” — abundance of nature but also thankfulness for its kindness

Question 9

To Autumn Middle

Answer 9

Working Theme

“Who hath not seen the oft amid thy store?” — personification, Autumn is often in food stores, major helper

“Half-reap’d”, “hook”, “gleaner” vs “sitting careless”, “sound asleep”, “Drows’d”. — work vs rest vocab personifies autumn as a fellow worker, toils along with humans, theme of dependency again/

“Watch the last oozings hours by hours” — repetition, direct address, autumn struggles along with humans in this season of harvest, dependance/symbiotic relationship

Question 10

To Autumn End

Answer 10

“Where are the songs of Spring”
— mocking spring with a rhetorical question

“soft-dying day”
“wailful choir”
“small gnats mourn”

— lexical field of death and mourning, mourning the loss of autumn, time is uncontrollable as it shifts to winter.

“Gathering swallows twitter in the skies”

— Ends with cyclical nature of time, migrating swallows

Question 11

Excerpt from the prelude context

Answer 11

Wordsworth was one of the first and most influential of the Romantic era

Lived in the Lake District

Enjoyed ice skating

The Prelude is nostalgic in its thoughts about his childhood and the intense feelings of delight he
experienced when he was walked or, as a child, played in the countryside

Question 12

Excerpt from the Prelude Start

Answer 12

‘in the frosty season when the sun’ ‘cottage windows through the twilight blaz’d’ - utilises sensory imagery, specifically visual and tactile, to evoke the atmosphere of a winter evening. Juxtaposition between frosty and blaz’d shows a sense of warmth in this atmosphere.

Many colons, semicolons and dashes, suggesting breathlessness and passion and excitement

“I heeded not the summons”
— a time of childhood innocence and rebellion, an important phase in a young person’s life in maturity

Question 13

Excerpt from the Prelude Title

Answer 13

The Prelude — an introduction, perhaps as this was an autobiographical poem which spanned from when he was 20 till death, an intro to his life? As a child…

Question 14

Excerpt from the Prelude Middle

Answer 14

“proud and exulting like an untir’d horse” — adjectives such as untir’d and loud and exulting create an image of the overflowing energy of a child in their youth

“We hiss’d along the polish’d ice” — Sibilance, imitates the sound of the skates on ice, it is. Vivid memory of fun and enjoyment in his life as a child

Question 15

Excerpt from the Prelude End

Answer 15

‘Meanwhile,” — volta, shows a change to a more melancholy, sombre tone. A shift from joy to maturity,foreshadowing the death of innocence.

“Leafless trees”, “icy crag”,”distant hills” — nature now sounding unfamiliar, unfriendly, not welcoming.

“The orange sky of evening died away” — metaphorical death of innocence