Death of a Naturalist

• "Bubbles gargled delicately"

  • The oxymoron of the onomatopoeic "gargling" and "delicately" shows the conflict that the narrator feels about whether he likes nature or not.
  • childhood wonder and ignorance of being able to find beauty in the strangest things
  • The sound of the bubbles creates a soothing sound, with an aggressive undertone.
  • graphic imagery
  • 'delicately' - adverb connoting fragility and grace
• 'grew like clotted water'

  • simile - reminds reader of blood when reading the word 'clotted' - grotesque imagery
  • negative simile - foreshadows destruction and loss of purity
  • language associated with the frogspawn foreshadows the way the narrator becomes repulsed by nature
• 'poised like mud grenades'

  • simile - negative exploration of the way the frogs move and the negative colour of them -brown instead of yellow- implying he doesn't like the frogs and is threatened by them
  • military language makes It seem like frogs were about to attack
• context

  • Seamus Heaney’s four year old brother died in a car accident when Heaney was a young boy. The death affected him badly and many of his poems are about loss of innocence.
  • Heaney grew up on a farm and many of his poems reflect his upbringing
• structure

  • In the first stanza, the speaker in the poem is full of enthusiasm and enjoys nature.
  • In the last stanza, this changes as he becomes more aware of the dangers of the world around him