Blackberry-Picking Essay

“Blackberries in June” by Ron Rash, is about a couple, Matt and Jamie, who have a very pessimistic family, especially when it comes to the young couples accomplishments in life. What makes Jamie and Matt different from the other family members? They have a lot of determination, motivation, discipline, and are willing to make sacrifices necessary to get where they want to be in life. Throughout the story, the author gives a variety of examples of just how different these two characters are in particular. The three qualities that are the most different from the rest of the family are unlike them they are goal oriented, hard working, and make the necessary sacrifices.

In Ron Rash’s “Blackberries in June,” it was easy to be immediately drawn into the story. People can relate to the life of Matt and Jamie. Their life of being married after high school and having a house of their own is a plan many people work to strive towards when in love after high school. Their life seems almost perfect or typical throughout the story. A wonderful and happy marriage with the wholesome relations with the other family members, and some tenseness between an in-law shows how Matt and Jamie’s lives are what seems to be, normal. When Charlton (Jamie’s brother) has an accident and loses his leg, Matt is determined to still follow their dreams and plans

From the beginning of the poem, the speaker tells of his naïve, consuming world of blackberries. Because the

Two of the poems written by Seamus Heaney, “Digging” and “Blackberry Picking”, contain recurring themes while both discussing entirely different scenes. The first poem, “Digging”, talks about Heaney’s memories of hearing his father digging in the potato garden outside the house. The second poem, “Blackberry-Picking”, carries a similar solemn tone, while describing another memory of Heaney’s of his experience with picking blackberries. These poems by Heaney share similar themes of reflection of his past experiences in which he dissects important life lessons from everyday events such as the passage of time and the uncertainty of life.

Although the title of this poem doesn't have an obvious meaning, it can be easily understood when the poem is analyzed.

fair”, you can tell this is the voice of a child. There is also a

Written in 1980, Galway Kinnell's Blackberry Eating is a poem which creates a strong metaphoric relationship between the tangible objects of blackberries, and the intangible objects of words. The speaker of the poem feels a strong attraction to the sensory characteristics (the touch, taste, and look) of blackberries. The attraction he feels at the beginning of the poem exclusively for blackberries is paralleled in the end by his appetite and attraction to words. The rush the speaker gets out of blackberry eating is paralleled to the enjoyment he finds in thinking about certain words; words which call up the same sensory images the blackberries embody.

The berries appear twice in the poem. At the start “she held out her hands bright with berries, the first of the season”. Here they appear as bright and in season or ready to eat. They also appear at the end of the poem as “shrivelled fruit”. This means that the berries would be old and simply not enjoyable to eat. This shows that the family is not in a place long enough to be able to grow a healthy crop. These berries represent the family as they also appear to be happy at the start of the poem as they were settled in their home, loving life however after the father announces that they would be moving, turned into ‘shrivelled fruit’ as they are thought to be sad and unhappy due to their constant movements. This relates to shrivelled fruit as it is not

Though the poem focuses heavily on the speaker’s attempts to satisfy his desire, no greater purpose appears to lie at the end of his quest. The “plate of eyes” that “burned” suggests that the speaker feels like he’s being watched, as if someone is standing and judging him for his thirst. The word “burned” implies that the feeling of being observed left a painful impression on him. The pickers leave the field with “hands peppered with thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard’s” (16). The choice of a comparison to Bluebeard, the violent murderer from a fairytale, suggests that the speakers links his desire with a violent, destructive act, further illustrating the way lust and desire is tangled up with guilt. Those who desire as the pickers do are haunted and tormented by the fruitlessness of their efforts. Furthermore, the poem is structured such that, for the most part, the ends of the lines do not quite rhyme. The “almost rhymes” throughout the poem mirror the disappoint the speakers feels; lines that come close to rhyming are just short of satisfying to read, similar to how the pickers’ quest does not quite fulfill their desire. By interweaving pain and disappointment with the blackberry picking process, the author suggests that with excess greed and desire comes pain and suffering. The pickers know, at least subconsciously, that their trek through the fields has neither an end goal nor a

The musical devices put style and emphasis into the poem and create a more deep description on how much Kinnell love eating blackberries. He uses words like “love”, “splurge”, and “ripest” to describe his affection for the berries.

This bitterness and sarcasm is revealed as strong characteristics of the narrator. Throughout the majority of the story, the narrator continues shows his distaste for any "happy" situation. Much like the hyphenated asides, Carver implements fragmented sentences behind description, to show the narrator pausing for a moment of color commentary.

At first glance this poem seems a happy tale of childhood. These are memories that make the heart smile. Images of heavy summer storms full of rain, alternating with bright, joyous sunshine, full bushels of blackberries waiting to be picked; these are images most can relate with. The reader can taste the bitter-sweetness of the summer’s first blackberry, feel the scratch of briars against their own skin, sense the excitement and butterflies in their own stomachs as they race to gather all the wondrous blackberries they can, followed by the anger and the disappointment when the blackberries rot and ferment before the readers’ eyes. However, if the reader were to take the diction and imagery quite literally, a somewhat different picture is aroused. “…a glossy purple clot…” (line 3) describing the first ripened blackberry, brings to mind the picture of a nasty blood clot in someone’s veins, why would Heaney compare blackberries to blood clots?

poem is not merely a static, decorative creation, but that it is an act of communication between the poet and

All poetry aims to communicate an experience; a body of memory, sensation, or wisdom that contributes significant meaning to the life of a poet and of all human beings. It is the mystery of literature that one may speak of a single, physical incident, yet draw deep universal conclusions from it. Like the Christian dogma of the Word made Flesh, the Christ both fully mortal and fully divine, the best of poetry dwells paradoxically in the realms of both literal and figurative. Seamus Heaney's poem, Blackberry-Picking, exhibits a precise, elegant poetic technique that permits such a simultaneous existence. Through his use of overt religious allusions, intense, metaphorical imagery, and sharply contrasting symbols, Heaney reveals a young protagonist's journey from childhood to adulthood, or in essence, immaturity to maturity, with a focus on the speaker’s reconciliation with an inconvenient yet inevitable truth - in essence, creating a Bildungsroman.

Alliteration is used quite often in the poem. Throughout the whole poem, there is a frequent repetition of “b” words, such as “big dark blobs burned”. In the readers mind, this creates a more powerful image of the berries, and gives a strong impression of their shape