Seamus Heaney Requiem For The Croppies

In Seamus Heaney’s poetry, there is a recurring theme of his talking of the past, and more predominantly about significant moments in time, where he came to realisations that brought him to adulthood. In “Death of a Naturalist” Heaney describes a moment in his childhood where he learnt that nature was not as beautiful as seem to be when he was just a naive child. Heaney does this on a deeper level in “Midterm Break” describes his experience of his younger brothers funeral and the mixed, confusing feelings he encountered, consequently learning that he no longer was a child, and had no choice but to be exposed to reality. Robert Frost in one sense also describes particular moments in time, where his narrator comes to realisations. However,

The author of “Anthem for Doomed Youth” leads his reader through his personal struggle and frustration of war. Owen has an abrasive approach when describing the death all around him and clearly expresses his anger with the “hasty orisons” for the dead. He speaks directly of battlefront in the first octet and then includes the home front in the second half of his sonnet. Owen’s purpose is not a commemoration of fallen soldiers. Rather, he divulges the disgust and disappointment of war. Like McCrae, Wilfred Owen paints a picture of the multitude of deaths. Back at the home front, “…each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.” We can construe that the author is not simply talking about preparing for bed in the evening, but rather lowering the blinds in a room where yet another dead soldier lies, as an indication to the community and out of respect for the soldier. There is a lack of “passing-bells for these who die as cattle….no prayers nor bells; Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs.” Owen writes as though he feels that there is indifference among the death of his fellow soldiers.

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.

A Comparison of Death of a Naturalist and Digging by Seamus Heaney The poems 'Death of a Naturalist' and 'Digging' have many similarities, and contrasts. Some of the reoccurring themes in the two poems include memories of childhood and changes in the life of the writer. There are contrasts too, in 'Death of a Naturalist'; the writer is concentrating on himself and his own experiences in life, rather than the experiences of others. In 'Digging', the opposite is true, as the writer concentrates mainly on the events in other people's lives, namely his father and grandfather.

The poems ‘Limbo’ and ‘Bye Child’ by Seamus Heaney are poems that evoke the casualties of sexual and emotional repression in Ireland, as well as and the oppression of both women and un baptized children, in a time where religion was most prominent and people were confined to the guidelines of the church and it’s community, as it was the ruling power. Both poems present this idea through the use of a child, representative of innocence and vulnerability. Through his poetry, Heaney gives a voice to those who have been silenced by society. Heaney manages to create this extended voice and

The soldiers who had attended the war were shown to have died brutally, like “cattle”, yet when reaching the home front, it is seen that they are laid to rest in a much more civil and dignified manner. The concept of this can be seen as an extended metaphor throughout the entire poem, with the battle front seen as a world filled with violence, fear and destruction, where as the home front is perceived as a place marked by order and ritual, a civilized world. The second sonnet opens with “What candles may be held to speed them all?”, invoking a more softer and compassionate tone towards the audience, more specifically through Owen’s use of a rhetorical question. It captures the readers’ attention, engaging them to feel empathetic and notice the shift of energy from anger and bitterness to a sadder and more somber tone. Owen’s use of descriptive language, as simple as it seems, such as ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ provokes the audience to view the horrors of the war as if they had been placed onto children, because in reality the ‘men; who had signed themselves into war to fight in glory for their country had really only just been boys themselves.

In the second stanza the distinctive experience of power is present. The use of the technique of imagery and emotive words “to pluck them from the shallows and bury them in burrows’ tells us that the soldiers were strong, loyal and had enough power within a degree to assist fellow soldiers. The use of personification to create sound “sob and clubbing of the gunfire” This leads the audience to understand what the soldiers were up against without even directly saying it. The imagery visually shows the scene in their

Like a shovel to dirt as a pen to paper. In “Digging,” Seamus Heaney uses specific elements such as diction, and imagery to convey his meaning that children don’t always want to be like their past generations of men.

Para-rhymes, in Owen’s poetry, generate a sense of incompleteness while creating a pessimistic, gloomy effect to give an impression of sombreness. Strong rhyming schemes are often interrupted unexpectedly with a para-rhyme to incorporate doubt to every aspect of this Great War. Who are the real villains and why are hundreds of thousands of lives being wasted in a war with no meaning? In ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’, the consistent sonnet rhyming scheme is disturbed by a half rhyme, “guns … orisons”, to show how the soldiers all died alone with only the weapons that killed them by their side, and a visual rhyme, “all … pall” to indicate that the reality of war is entirely the opposite to what it seems - no glory, no joy and no heroism, but only death and destruction. Owen occasionally works with this technique in a reverse approach to create similar thought. For instance, the assonance, consonance and half rhyme based poem, ‘The Last Laugh’, contains an unforeseen full rhyme, “moaned … groaned”, to emphasise that nothing is ever fixed in war except the ghastly fact that the weapons are the true winners. Different forms of Para rhymes often work together with common schemes to ably bring out the main ideas of Owen’s poetry.

The form of the poem is sonnet, and although it is often associated with love poetry, this time Heaney describes a sexual union, possibly rape. On the surface, it is about a man prevailing over a woman. But it has a deeper meaning: England (the tyrannical male) ruling over Ireland (the oppressed woman) . Irish literature has had a tendency to represent Ireland as a raped woman in the past. Heaney uses this technique in his poem.

How much does an artist’s life affect the art they produce? One’s art certainly can be an expression of one’s surroundings and in this manner the surroundings are woven like a thread into their body of work. Seamus Heaney, born and raised in Northern Ireland, has grown up with many strong influences in his life that are visible in his poetry. As Robert Buttel claims in his article on Seamus Heaney “the imprint of this poet’s origins is indelibly fixed in his work” (180). Living in the “bogland” as Heaney has described Northern Ireland left an imprint on his poems, as he often depicts the lush green countryside and pastoral scenes of his youth. However, he also acknowledges his modern society.

This essay will analyse the challenges Seamus Heaney faced during the process of translation and writing, including his own conscious effort to make the play suitable for a modern audience. It will demonstrate how Heaney’s use of language and poetry aided in presenting modern ideas through the timbre of Irish/English diction and idiom in an attempt to make the play more ‘speakable’. Identifying features of Greek theatrical conventions and how Heaney used these to shape his play. Heaney also presents social and political issues through The Burial at Thebes in a way that resonates with a contemporary audience.

Duffy uses the image, of the “boys”, “kissing photographs from home” along with the repeated lists of either family members, common names, or aspirations in order to create an emotive link between the speaker and reader. Likewise, Owen’s poem examines the affect war has on young men such as himself. Using Hyperbole’s like “all of my dreams” to make the reader compassionate towards the speaker. Owen’s next lines appeal to the reader to reflect on their own experiences by direct address, alliteration, imagery, asking the reader to personally stop telling the lie that are is honorable and noble. Contrastingly, Duffy strongly utilizes repetition to summarize the main theme in her poem. The final two lines are the same as two earlier lines making the reader dwell on why she has made this recurrence. In Duffy’s poem with focuses heavily on the rewinding of time and the changing of history, she repeats this phrase to illustrate the fact that nothing has changed. Both poems are rejections of war propaganda and reflections on how even after the tragedy and sorrow in both poems war are still fought daily and nothing has changed in the

is the idea of the bone as stone, with the mind as a catapult. This

In contrast, the poems “To Ireland in the Coming Times” and “Easter 1916” carried the theme of unity. In the