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Analysis Of Seamus Heaney 's ' The Wind 's On Her Naked Front '

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In lines one, two, and three of “Punishment,” Seamus Heaney wrote “I can feel the tug; of the halter at the nape; of the neck.” These three lines of the poem must be read together to understand that Heaney is basically describing how one is handcuffed and took to jail for committing a certain crime. Heaney then in lines three and four wrote “the wind; on her naked front.” These lines portray that after one is in jail, they must then be ashamed in front of their peers for their action. This humiliation would be in the form of a jury that would be determining if one is guilty or not guilty. Heaney uses imagery in this stanza to help readers envision these events in a different light. For example, in lines one through three, Heaney is …show more content…

Once again, Heaney created this stanza to provide information on the woman’s body, but one starts to realize that modern day punishment is just as harsh as primitive punishment, just in a different form. At the end of the stanza, Heaney uses a period to show the changing of events. Here, he is describing that once one is humiliated, they are then stripped of their life.

Stanza Three Stanza three starts to show that the crimes one commits also starts to fade them into distant memories along with the others who create punishable acts. Seamus Heaney wrote in lines one and two, “I can see her drowned; body in the bog.” When read together, these lines start to show that once one is stripped of their life, in jail, they are just another part of a lifeless society, and start to fade into distant memory. Heaney uses imagery to describe a lifeless body in a bog, and this helps one envision her mixed in with a crowd of prisoners and forgotten. Heaney in line three states “the weighing stone.” From this, one can infer that she was weighed down by the outside world, and that her life has been hampered by her actions. In line four, Heaney wrote “the floating rods and boughs.” The imagery created here helps envision how one would walk around in a jail among all the other prisoners just wasting their life away. Heaney created this stanza to describe a real body that had been drowned for its crime (Fawbert, n.d.). This

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