storm on the island

• Seamus Heaney was Catholic and lived in Northern Ireland.
• Seamus Heaney wrote about rural life and landscapes because he grew up in a village which was part of a farming community.
• Seamus Heaney used his poetry to reflect the conflict 'The Troubles' in the 20th century which was his early adulthood.
• The storm on the island is a metaphor for the violence in Northern Ireland.
• The title of the poem, 'Storm On The Island', is a homophone of Ireland, symbolizing the violence in Northern Ireland.
• The first 8 letters of the poem's title spell out the word 'Stormont', which were government buildings in Northern Ireland and Belfast, conveying a political message from Seamus Heaney.
• 'We are prepared'- We is a unifying pronoun which shows community. Are shows their overconfidence, boldness and arrogance in the declarative
• 'The wizened earth has never troubled us'. Wizened connotates wisdom & respect, or shows that the land is dried up/ shrivelled. Irony-the lack of vegetation that the dry land offers (hay) hows there is little that would take flight and become a danger in a strong storm
• 'sink walls in rock' 'good slate' acts as a strong opening statement, connotates safety and strength. the way the houses are built suggests storms are regular & they survive them through their collective strength – hard ‘k’ and ‘t’ sounds reflect this
• 'blows full Blast'. plosives give a sense of violence & aggression which suggests nature is attacking the island. plosives also resemble bullets which creates an idea that nature is as deadly as a weapon.
• The plosives in 'blows full blast' are onomatopoeic and makes the reader consider a bomb, reflects the context of Heaney's early adulthood and the conflict in Northern Ireland during the 20th century. 'Blast' is isolated by enjambment and caesura which enhances it's strength.
• 'you know what i mean' relies on conversational colloquialisms to connect reality of islander's lives to the reader's and a sense of personal experience.
• Heaney uses enjambment & caesura to fragment the poem in some places, and to build it to a crescendo in others. This creates an uneven rhythm, rather like the storm itself. The enjambment picks up the rhythm, which then hits an abrupt stop at each moment of caesura – granting power to hard monosyllabic words such as ‘blast’ and ‘lost.’ 'Which might prove company when it blows full/ Blast:'
• structure- free verse (no rhyme) and enjambment show the power and freedom of the storm
• structure- caesura. slows the pace of the poem so the devastation is prolonged
• structure- iambic meter, mimics natural conversational tone of English language and the unifying pronoun 'we' which shows the speaker is inclusive as if we are part of the action.
• Theme of power of nature and personal experience of a place.
• onomatopoeic words: ' blows ' ' blasts ' ' spits' ' exploding ' are used to reflect sounds of the wind and make the reader feel as if they are living a vicarious immersive experience through the narrator
• Compares with London & The emigree: personal experience of a place
• Compares with exposure and the prelude: feelings of nature having power over humans
• Tone: hope & optimism, shifts to fear
• Heaney was born in 1939 in northern ireland, and died in 2013
• power of nature- 'you might think that the sea is company' 'but no' you would assume the gentle splashing of the waves would be calming, but they turn violent and turbulent when the storm arrives. turns fromsomething comforting to something vicious.