Storm On The Island

• Context

  Seamus Heaney -> Irish poet - promotes Ireland -> grew up during The Troubles

  • The Troubles -> Irish civil war -> 3500 died - religious/border conflict
  • Potato Famine -> 1845 to 1852 -> land was unyielding -> emigration from Ireland - displaced
• Form + Structure

  Semantic Field of aggressive/militaristic language

  Personification of weather as enemy throughout
• "the flung spray hits the very windows,

  spits like a tame cat turned savage"

  • enjambment -> nature can't be contained
  • simile "spits like a tame cat turned savage" - zoomorphism of weather -> wild/brutal and violent -> savage/primal - instinctive
• " wind dives and strafes invisibly. Space

  is a salvo. We are bombarded by the empty air"

  • military language -> deliberate attack - weather is enemy/dangerous -> The Trouble
• "This wizened earth has

  never troubled us"

  • "wizened" -> shrivelled/withered -> land is unyielding/inhospitable -> Potato Famine -> inhospitable land pushing people away
• "when it blows full blast [...] leaves and

  branches can raise a tragic chorus in a gale"

  • intense wind brings fear
  • "chorus" -> repetitive -> surety it will return like PTSD
  • "tragic chorus" -> ironic - music is meant to bring joy
• "You might think that the sea is company, Exploding

  comfortably down on the cliffs But no"

  • "Exploding comfortably" -> juxtaposition -> repetitive so usually calm but the explosions are dangerous
  • "But no" -> pausing the rhythm - emphasising dangerous/unpredictability of nature
• "Strange, it is a

  huge nothing that we fear."

  • "huge nothing" - oxymoron -> the power of nature compared to man's small concerns
  • "nothing" -> weather is enemy -> wind cannot physically be held/seen - is nothing/invisible
• "you can listen to the thing you fear

  forgetting that it pummels your house too"

  • helpless can only "listen to the thing you fear"
  • "pummels" -> wind is aggressive so enemy