Death of a Naturalist - Seamus Heaney

• Themes

  • Loss of innocence
  • Nature
  • Childhood
  • Growing up
• Context

  Four year old brother died in car accident when Heaney was young

  Poem is written in a boys perspective
• Poems to compare

  Afternoons- loss

  Excerpt from the Prelude- childhood memories, innocence
• Beginning

  "flax-dam festered"

  • fricative