How does Heaney evocatively and memorably convey childhood experience in poem “Death of a Naturalist”
How does Heaney evocatively and memorably convey childhood experience in
“Death of a Naturalist” This poem is composed of two stanzas. The first, longer one describes pleasant memories while the second recounts a particular unpleasant experience that changes the protagonist’s outlook on nature.
Heaney uses childish language to tell us this is a young boy. “The daddy frog… the mammy frog” are juvenile words. “On shelves at school” tells us he is at an age when that is encouraged. “Best of all was the warm thick slobber of frogspawn” suggests he is childishly enthusiastic. The boy uses childish equipment to gather the frogspawn; “Here every spring I would fill jampots of the jellied specks”. His teacher explains the life cycle of frogs in simple terms “how he croaked and …. laid hundreds of eggs and this was called frogspawn”. Taken together these indicate a boy of around ten to twelve years old.
He also makes extensive use of sensory qualities to describe a hot and oppressive climate throughout. In the first stanza he says “Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun”. He also evokes a sense of heaviness and decay; “Flax had rotted there” and “Bluebottles wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell”. This sets the scene for what is to come later which is far more threatening.
In the second stanza he uses this scene to create the moment when childhood innocence is changed by a revolting experience. To start with, he increases the power of the words to make clear this will be unpleasant; “Then one hot day when the fields were rank with cowdung” tells us that this is a moment, a point when things will change, and not well. This theme continues with “the air was thick with a bass chorus”, “their loose necks pulsed”, “gross-bellied frogs”, “the slap and plop were obscene threats”, and “their blunt heads farting”. Throughout this passage Heaney has used exaggerated sight, sound and smell to create the threat and disgust which will change the boy’s outlook on
“Death of a Naturalist” This poem is composed of two stanzas. The first, longer one describes pleasant memories while the second recounts a particular unpleasant experience that changes the protagonist’s outlook on nature.
Heaney uses childish language to tell us this is a young boy. “The daddy frog… the mammy frog” are juvenile words. “On shelves at school” tells us he is at an age when that is encouraged. “Best of all was the warm thick slobber of frogspawn” suggests he is childishly enthusiastic. The boy uses childish equipment to gather the frogspawn; “Here every spring I would fill jampots of the jellied specks”. His teacher explains the life cycle of frogs in simple terms “how he croaked and …. laid hundreds of eggs and this was called frogspawn”. Taken together these indicate a boy of around ten to twelve years old.
He also makes extensive use of sensory qualities to describe a hot and oppressive climate throughout. In the first stanza he says “Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun”. He also evokes a sense of heaviness and decay; “Flax had rotted there” and “Bluebottles wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell”. This sets the scene for what is to come later which is far more threatening.
In the second stanza he uses this scene to create the moment when childhood innocence is changed by a revolting experience. To start with, he increases the power of the words to make clear this will be unpleasant; “Then one hot day when the fields were rank with cowdung” tells us that this is a moment, a point when things will change, and not well. This theme continues with “the air was thick with a bass chorus”, “their loose necks pulsed”, “gross-bellied frogs”, “the slap and plop were obscene threats”, and “their blunt heads farting”. Throughout this passage Heaney has used exaggerated sight, sound and smell to create the threat and disgust which will change the boy’s outlook on