Out of the bag - Seamus Heaney

Question 1

‘All of us came in Doctor Kerlin’s bag.’

Answer 1

• doctor appears like a god-like figure
• childlike meditation of history of origins

Question 2

‘disappear’
‘reappear’

Answer 2

juxtaposition

Question 3

‘Those nosy, rosy, big soft hands’

Answer 3

use of assonance and rhyme to create a fond, awestruck and childlike

Question 4

‘Then like a hypnotist Unwinding us, he’d wind the instruments’

Answer 4

• simile, creates a sense of trickery
• terrifying imagery
• doctor - puppetmaster - omnipotent

Question 5

‘Sud-luscious, saved for him from the rain-butt
And savoured by him afterwards,’

Answer 5

• mimics the childlike innocence of the narrator at the time
  -sensory imagery and use of sibilance adds to the dream like quality of the poem

Question 6

‘Hyperborean, beyond-the-north wind blue, Two peepholes to the locked room I saw into’

Answer 6

• Greek mythology
• ‘hyperborean’ - perfect people who led perfect experiences, the narrator slips into imagination
• ‘two peepholes’ - eyes are the windows to the soul - metaphor looking into the doctors soul

Question 7

‘And chill of tiles, steel hooks, chrome surgery tools And blood dreeps in the sawdust’

Answer 7

• ominous semantic field - terrifying imagery for a young child
• reminiscent of a horror film

Question 8

‘Poeta doctus’

Answer 8

a learned poet who refers to the classics

Question 9

‘Asclepius’

Answer 9

hero and god of medicine in ancient greek, god of healing

Question 10

‘Lourdes,’

Answer 10

• a town in SW France, a leading place of pilgrimage for Roman Catholics
• heal themselves through faith

Question 11

‘Epidaurus’

Answer 11

a small city in ancient Greece

Question 12

‘sanatorium’

Answer 12

antiquated name for specialised hospitals

Question 13

‘A site of incubation’

Answer 13

to ancient beliefs that people will be healed in their sleep
- links to the incubation of babies

Question 14

‘epiphany’

Answer 14

a sudden manifestation or perception of something, realising the ancient Greeks were conscious of health

Question 15

‘thurifer’

Answer 15

a metal censor suspended from chains, in which incense is burned during worship services

Question 16

‘Doctor Kerlin at the steamed-up glass Of the scullery window, starting in to draw With his large pink index finger dot-faced men’

Answer 16

• presentation of doctor - Zeus-like figure
• the narrator is musing on bringing to life physical things and his creative process to bring them to life
• enjambment, poem is freer

Question 17

‘blinded with sweat, Blinking and shaky in the windless light.’

Answer 17

• classical imagery, wind associated with forces of creativity - crisis for the past

Question 18

‘To one going in to chemotherapy And one who had come through. I didn’t want’

Answer 18

musing on the limitations of poetry and how even though it can create miracles, it can’t ease everything bad

Question 19

‘By Hygeia, his daughter, her name still clarifying The haven of light she was, the undarkening door.’

Answer 19

• Asclepius daughter and goddess of good health
• opposite to the doctor, doesn’t have an ominous effect, but rather a healing one
• crafts a shift from the masculine to Heaney’s own feminine inspiration

Question 20

‘she’s asleep’

Answer 20

ambiguity - poems gone full circle

Question 21

‘In sheets put on for the doctor, wedding presents That showed up again and again, bridal And usual and useful at births and at deaths.’

Answer 21

• juxtaposition coming full circle - life and death
• semantic field of rights of passage

Question 22

‘Me at the bedside, incubating for real, Peering, appearing to her as she closes’

Answer 22

• repetition
• the narrator is disappearing and appearing like the doctor - juxtaposition
• mirroring the first stanza

Question 23

‘Into a faraway smile whose precinct of vision I would enter every time, to assist and be asked In that hoarsened whisper of triumph,’

Answer 23

• relationships with parents

Question 24

‘Of the new wee baby the doctor brought for us all When I was asleep?’

Answer 24

• shifting from myth to reality and provides a sense of enclosure
• ‘wee’ - sweet, colloquial tone which contrasts the elevated language of stanza two

Question 25

Overall messages

Answer 25

• how child’s perspective differ from an adult
• blend personal memory with knowledge of the classical world of ancient Greece to interrogate myths of origin

Question 26

Structure

Answer 26

• not bound by line length, which echoes how the poet doesn’t allow himself to be bound by people underestimating him
• chapter like sections
• internal rhythm