Poetry- Death of a Naturalist (essay)
How does Heaney convey the process of growing up in ‘Death of a Naturalist’? Heaney conveys the process of going from childhood into adolescence in ‘Death of a Naturalist’ through vivid imagery and his use of language. In the first stanza we are immediately told how the ‘flax-dam festered’; the use of the word ‘festered’ implies a sense of decay and all things dying out, suggesting how the poem is going to reflect the ‘Death’ of something. Even though the voice of the first stanza appears to be unaware of this existing element of change due to the naïve tone, the language used such as ‘rotted’ and ‘sweltered’ shows the sense of threat which is gradually developing on the voice of the first stanza. Heaney is using the flax-dam where he grew up in Ireland to symbolise the process of growing up and how the innocence of childhood is stripped away without you even realising it. The concept of simple pleasures within childhood is reflected when Heaney describes how the ‘warm thick