context - storm on the island

• context

  • poem is a metaphor for the conflict in N. Ireland
  • political form to the poem - name - STORMONT - name of the parliament in Ireland which is a homophone of the world island in the title. political poem but we have to figure out if Heaney is with the Protestants or Catholics or neither
  • 'Storm on the Island' - nothing to be afraid of as its a small problem 'island' can be fixed
• Seamus Heaney - wrote this poem in 1966 which shows his poem is prescient for 'The Troubles' that happen in Ireland in 1968

  • grew up in a N.Ireland village
  • focused his poems nature using it as a metaphor for human nature + explores identity w/ it
  • Death of a naturalist - H first collection of poems where he demonstrates the violence of nature instead of romanticizing it as others did
• Speaker + situation - islander during a war

  Purpose -extended metaphor for the political conflict in the N.Ireland

  A - nature is more powerful, sources of human fear is the unknown, humans r acc powerless

  M- similes, personification, cesura, half rhyme, iambic petameter