Death of a naturalist

• Introduction (theme of nature)

  In Death of a naturalist, Seamus Heaney reflects on his childhood views of nature, and describes paying in the ’flax-dam’. He uses imagery and language including similes and alliteration to convey this childhood enjoyment of nature to the readers. He then goes on to explaining how this view on nature changes as he grew and matured, possible due to life altering events, using hyperbolic language and imagery.
• Context

  • Irish poet who write about Irelands rural life and nature
  • 1966 - relatively modern
  • Follows romantic tradition
  • Won Nobel prize for literature 1995
  • part of larger collection of work with the same title - explores themes of innocence and natural world
  • Poets brother died age 4 when he was 12 years old
  • Poem can be seen as part of broader tradition of modernist poetry with emphasis on darker side of human experience
• 1st stanza - child’s fascination of nature

  2nd stanza - adult perspective
• Title ‘death of a naturalist’ 


  ‘naturalist refers to child not scientist so ‘death‘ is of childhood innocence and interest

  Title is playful and overreactive - mocking boys overreaction
• Poem is written in blank verse - a verse that has no rhyme scheme and is written in iambic pentameter. Associated with classic poets
• Heaney uses childlike language to convey youth
• Childhood idyll - Heaney celebrates boys innocent fascination with nature
• ‘all year’

  sense of timelessness

  reflects loose grasp children have on time

  generalisation and lack of specificity convey consuming long lasting interest in nature - doesn't stop

  nostalgic and reflective
• ‘flax-dam festered‘


  repetitive f sound

  conveys sense of rotting and decay

  child is not bothered
• lines 1-5 repulsive semantic field 


  ‘festered‘ ‘heavy headed’ ‘rotted’ ‘sods’ ‘sweltered’ ‘gargled’

  connotes ugliness and rotting

  young Heaney loved it

  infatuated with transformal power of nature and time
• ‘sweltered in the punishing sun’

  personified as aggressive

  negative undertones from beginning - childhood innocence stopped him noticing
• ‘bubbles gargled delicatley’


  onomatopoeic ‘bubbles’ bring enjoyment to life

  oxymoron ‘delicately’ shows childhood joy evoked from something conventionally repulsive and fascination of grimiest parts of nature
• ‘best of all was the warm thick slobber’

  almost sense of comfort

  superlative ‘best of all’ shows fascination with the natural world

  oxymoronic relationship between slobber and boyish love
• ‘sound around the smell’

  synasthetic imagery and sibilance make reader feel emerged in nature and convey child like joy
• ‘clotted water’ 


  simile shows anisthesis between off putting imagery and childhood fascination
• ‘here, every spring’


  ‘here‘ conveys sense of imidiecy

  ‘Every spring’ connotes new birth and sense of joy and freedom
• ‘I would fill jampotfulls of the jellied’ 


  possessive approach - personal gain

  alliteration shows abundance and child-like excitement of nature
• ‘wait and watch’

  alliteration conveys excitement and impatience
• ‘the fattening dots burst’ 


  ‘fattening’ uses nature to connote growth and maturation - perhaps foreshadowing

  ‘burst’ dynamic / active verb choice shows childlike excitement
• simplistic explanation of reproductive system preserves innocence
• ‘and’ ‘and’ ‘and’

  polysndeton shows child-like enthusiasm, pace, alliteration and lack of logic
• ‘you could tell the weather by frogs too’


  colliquol ‘too’ shows mundane
• ‘for they were yellow in the sun and brown in the rain’


  ends abruptly, almost cut short. Change
• In the second stanza Heaney uses vivid and powerful imagery to describe horrors boy experienced and darker side of the natural world
• beginning of second stanza

  place does not change but speakers reaction

  something changed in gap between stanzas to change perspective
• ‘then’

  temporal and thematic shift - the poems Volta
• ‘rank’ ‘cowdung’ 


  harsh constanance shows unpleasant side of nature and newfound matured distaste
• ‘angry frogs’ 


  vengeful and threatening

  shows newfound fear

  unpleasantness of earlier has impacted him and now finds nature unenjoyable
• ‘invaded the flax dam’ ‘I ducked through hedges’

  threatening and military semantic field

  conveys sense of intimidation and fear
• ‘a coarse croaking I had not heard before’


  Alliteration conveys the fear caused by this change in nature

  Perspective changed not sound
• ‘frogs were cocked’


  violent militaristic language conveys darker side of nature
• ‘their loose necks pulsed like sails’

  simile suggests he’s now repulsed by nature / physical features
• ‘obscene threats’ 


  sibilance conveys sense of vulnerability caused by unfamiliarity of nature
• ‘poised like mud grenades’

  simile / militaristic language shows threat / fear evoked by nature
• ‘I sickened, turned and ran’

  dynamic / active verb choice speeds up pace of poem and makes reaction seem absurd
• ‘the great slime kings’


  personification and elevation

  Overwhelming threat as now stronger than boy
• ‘that if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it’


  personification

  aggressive - conveys darker side of nature almost comical - undermines fear