🌀 storm on the island Flashcards
Who is the poet of Storm on the Island?
Seamus Heaney
Summary of Storm on the Island
An island community is preparing for a storm. They have designed the island to withstand storms and nature. The land is barren or crops and trees. In the storm, nature seems to turn against them. They stay hiding inside waiting for it to pass - they are powerless and scared
5 key quotes in Storm on the Island
1) ‘so, as you see, there are no stacks’
- COLLOQUIAL AND EVERYDAY LANGUAGE: Heaney relies on conversational colloquialisms to connect the reality of the islander’s lives to the readers
- This community is united with things they don’t have. Barren and miserable landscape. Represents how Northern Ireland cannot escape the political conflict
2) ‘Can raise a tragic chorus’
- Continues the theme of community vs isolation in the situation of a natural disaster
- Protesting. An allusion to Greek tragedy - warns us about the tragedies coming. Heaney warning his Irish readers the tragedy coming (assassinations)
3) ‘spits like a tame cat / Turned savage’
- Mistaken belief that they had tamed nature - then the cat turns against its owner. This replicates how the islanders never owned nature - it was always more powerful than them. Split the tamed and known nature before from the violent aggressive storm
- SIMILE AND SIBILANCE: Visual and auditory imagery, plosives, captures violence of the rain -> TRANSFORMATION OF HARMLESS TO HARMFUL because damaged nature too much
4) ‘Space is a salvo’
- METAPHOR: Windy and air threatening -> weakness and vulnerability of us
- A salvo is the firing of many bullets
5) ‘Strange, it is a huge nothing that we fear’
- ‘huge nothing’ is an OXYMORON -> consequences are massive -> over 3000 people die in Northern Ireland shot
- This is the final message where conflict is over nothing as both sides are Christians, and believe in the same God and that Jesus died to give peace, so what they’re doing makes no sense
Context for Storm on the Island
CONFLICT BETWEEN IRELAND AND NORTHERN IRELAND
- Late 12th century, Britain took over Ireland.
- British confiscated land
- 1922: South Ireland was a seperate country and Northern Ireland stayed part of the UK.
- Heaney was born in Northern Ireland after that but was a Catholic and moved to the Republic (nationalist). He might face persecution from the gov. in N.I
- He wrote in the time where there was the Northern Ireland Civil rights movement to end discrimination against Catholics
Form and structure of Storm on the Island
CAESURA AND ENJAMBMENT
- Fluctuation of the weather and constant barrage of the storm on the house
PRONOUNS
- ‘We’ and ‘Your’ to include the reader and solidarity between Catholics, unity, and strength
1 LONG VERSE
- Lack of stanza or breathing break which highlights the overwhelming situation and danger of the storm
RHYME SCHEME IS IRREGULAR AND HAS HALF RHYMES
- Uncontrollable weather
DRAMATIC MONOLOGUE
- Persona of islander
- ‘we’ is a collective experience
BLANK VERSE
- Iambic pentameter with no rhyme -> controlled structure but the poem is about having no control
- Uses English traditional poetry in his Irish talk - juxtaposed and reflects the conflict between the Irish and British
ALLUDED TO THE SEMANTIC FIELD OF WARFARE
- References to war when its about a storm
- THE STROM CAN BE READ AS METAPHOR FOR THE VIOLENT POLITICAL TROUBLES THAT IRELAND HAS EXPERIENCED
STORMONT MEANING
- Refers parliment buildings in Ireland so the poem is about politics
CYCLICAL STRUCTURE
- Half rhyme between the first and last couplet -> cycle of preparation, storm, and recovery is never ending. OMNIPOTENCE OF NATURE
Key themes in Storm on the Island
- Not a romanticized view of nature but a realistic image of its danger and violence
- Conflict between community and isolation
- Conflict between and nature
- Rentless inescapable nature of the attack
Poems to compare with Storm on the Island
EXTRACT FROM, THE PRELUDE
- S: Both show nature as powerful, SOTI is due to the violence of nature, Prelude is due to the extent and size of nature. Both speakers discovers truths about the world through their encounters with nature
- D: SOTI is physical and being attacked by nature, while Prelude is psychological (nature is inciting fear and redefining their view of the world)
OZYMANDIAS
- S: Power of nature is greater than the power of humans, OMNIPOTENCE OF NATURE. Both connect power with isolation
- D: Ozy is military power connected to aggression while SOTI is the power of the storm connected to aggression
EXPOSURE:
- S: Both show nature as powerfully aggressive, with a constant barrage of attack, and this attack is often inescapable
