Out the Bag

Question 1

Summarise the poem

Answer 1

Recalls scenes from his boyhood particularly visits to his families home. He recounts visits to the religious shrines in Greece but keeps returning in memory to the plain little bedroom where he and his siblings were born

Question 2

How are themes of childhood innocence and imagination shown?

Answer 2

• Isn’t the textbook discussion of the birds and bees and instead, Heaney asserts that all of us came in Doctor Kerlin’s bag. Heaney illustrates how children’s imaginations try to make sense of events they don’t quite understand.
• The figure of Doctor Kerlin represented godlike authority.
• The mature Heaney seemingly tries to recapture some of the wonder of childhood and longs for a visit from Hygeia, goddess of cleanliness, whose name echoes the description of Doctor Kerlin’s
• The poem suggests that adult knowledge, once “out of the bag,” can’t be stuffed back in.