Death of a naturalist

Many of Heaney's earliest works deal with his surrounding nature, farming activities, and his family history. Heaney's first collection of poems, "Death of a Naturalist" describes the transition from the innocent childhood to the adulthood. "Death" represents the loss of the age of innocence. "Digging", the first poem of this collection, is a recollection of childhood memory associated with his forefathers' farming career. In this poem, Heaney expresses his sensual passion for the native earth, his respect for traditional labour, and his admiration for forefathers' farming skills. This is also one of the most representative poems of himself, because in it we can find his most important features as a writer: writing about his surrounding and his determination to become a poet. By using a comparison of pen to a gun, Seamus Heaney justify his decision to become a poet.

The title "Digging" gives the reader a clear sense that the poem is involved with actions of digging. Three generations, Heaney's grandfather, his father, and himself, are involved in digging: his grandfather dug turf, his father dug up potatoes, he is digging up his childhood memories and his past. "Digging" is a free verse poem with eight stanzas containing two couplets. Although it has some rhymes: "thumb" and "gun"(in the first two lines); "sound", "ground" and "down" (in line 3, line 4, and line 5); and "men like them" (line 28), no consistent rhyme scheme runs throughout the poem. Like other postmodernists, Seamus Heaney refuses to follow modernism's tradition with harmony and organized form.
The poem is written in first person narrative with shift between present, past ,and future tenses. The poem begins in the present tense as Seamus Heaney looks down from his window to see his father digging, "I look down till his straining rump among the flowerbed"; then it goes into the past tense when he finds himself looking back twenty years to the same place where his father was digging."Bends low, comes up twenty years away/ Stooping in rhythm through potato drills/ Where he was digging" (line 7-line9). Heaney continues using past tense as he recalls seeing his grandfather cutting turf. Later, the last two stanzas," I've no spade to follow men like them" (line 28), return to the present. Heaney claims that instead of inheriting the family tradition of physical labour as an occupation, he holds on to his pen as his career. And the end, the final line, "I'll dig with it" (line 31), which emphasise Seamus Heaney's determination of becoming a poet, is in future tense.

Heaney starts the poem with introduction to his pen, " Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests/ snug as a gun". "snug" is a synonyms for the word, comfortable. This quote "snug as a gun" (line 2) gives the impression that the pen fits naturally in his hand, suggesting that Seanmus Heaney has a nature for being a poet, and he enjoys writing. Heaney directly compares his pen to a gun by the application of simile. The comparison of pen to a gun implies that a pen can be uses as his defensive weapon. Both objests remain harmless and motionless until actions are taken upon them. A gun used in wartime causes confliction and death. And a pen used for political purposes can be mightier than the sword. After Easter Rising,1916, many Irish poets, such as William Butler Yeats, one of Seamus Heaney's earliest role-models, wrote a good deal of poems containing political messages[ "The Life and Works of William Butler Yeats ". National Library of Ireland (search for Steinach). Retrieved on 19 October 2008.]. The opening of "Digging" suggests that Heaney may, like many great Irish poets, use his pen as asword, a weapon to support his ideological war.
However, grew up a farmer family in Northern Irland, Heaney not only witnesses the endless battles, skirmishes, assassinations, ambushes, occupations, crop burnings, house burnings and dispossessions that occurred during the 800 years of British domination over Ireland, but also looks down to, what is deeper and more vital, the very earth, the actual, physical soil and mystical soul of Ireland. Political turmoil sweeps through the country like a tornado, the beloved ones die, brother turns against brother, personal properties are lost, but the needs of physical life stand above all. Heaney sees higher value in his compatriots' needs for shelter, food, warmth, and protection than an individual's idealism.

In the last stanza, Heaney clearly claims that he will not use his pen as a sword, a weapon, but as a tool to excavate "through living roots" to that which is buried in each of us. In the end of the poem, Heaney repeats the opening lines "Between my finger and my thumb / the squad pen rest". Now the image of the pen as a gun has been replaced. Here his pen becomes a metaphorical spade, which suggests that his pen is like his took, as the spades were the tools of his father and grandfather. So, he will continue with his work, digging in his memories through writing.
Many of Heaney's poems in the collection of "Death of a Naturalist" are involved with nature, childhood memory, the formulation of adult identities, and family relationships. "Death of a Naturalist", the second poem of the collection, is concerned with rural life experience, loss of childhood innocence and the following transitions into adulthood. This poem is about a young boy who loves to go collecting frog spawn; but then one day he grows up and notices although the frogspawn always been there, now he perceives it in a completely different way.
The poem is split into two stanzas. The first one depicts a fearless, innocent, child full of wonder. An intense passion for the exploration of gruesome complexity of nature is evoked in the child. However, deep inside him lies the opposing controversial adolescent waiting to exploit nature for its dark and disgusting traits:"All year the flax-dam festered in the heart/Of the townland"(line 1-2). The first line, a description of the nature, is symbollic of the conflict in the boy between the pleasure of nature and the fear and the uncertainty of it. The word 'festered' conveys a string sense of disgust and decay. Heaney displays the image of the rotting flax growing deep inside of the boy's heart. This usage of imagery fore shadows the later transition the boy will undergo.

In line 16 - line 20, Heaney adopted a type of childlike language features. "The daddy frog was called a bullfrog/ And how he croaked and how the mammy frog/ Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was/ Frogspawn". Heaney uses two "and" to connect the sentence, which resembles a child's writing style. By imitating childlike writing, Heaney emphasizes the curious and innocent nature of children, and also makes a contrast to his later repugnant description on frogs.

The second stanza begins with, "Then one hot day" (line 21), the transition point of the poem, signifies the boy's development into an inquisitive an adolescence and his loss of innocence. "Then one hot day when fields were rank/With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs"(line 21-22). The use of enjambment, the breakdown of a complete sentence by the end of a line or between two verses, emphasises the word 'rank' which describes a strong pungent smell penetrating through air. Notice the transition has an effect on the poet's tone as well. Now the poet delineates the creature as "gross-bellied frogs"(line 26) with "loose necks pulsed like sails" (line 27) as the boy undergoes a chang in personality, which conveys the central themes of the poem: growing up and losing innocence. The boy then reflects on new sights and sounds recognizable as an adolescent. "To a coarse croaking that i had not heard/Before" (line24-25).The enjambment used here emphasises the word 'before' creating the image of the characters lost innocence, reflecting back on how he used to see nature as a child.
Heaney continues to emphasize the boy's changed personality as he creates the new found sense of fear and panic in the boy. "I sickened, turned, and ran.The great slime kings/ Were gathered there for vengeance" (line 31-32) There are two possible interpretations for these two particular lines. First, it can seen as the development of the boy's guilt as the he returns to the scene of a crime. The "coarse croaking"(line 24) frogs are taking revenge for him having stolen the frog spawn. Also, it can be seen as a child losing his innocence and his love of nature changing from the childish curiousity to the guilty adolescent persona. The intrusion of fear is intensified by the line "great slime kings/ Were gathered there for vengeance "(line30-31). This description contrasts with the previous image of the precious spawn being kept in the jam jars. This highlights his change from fearless to fearful.

The last line, "That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it", expresses how far Heaney's imagination as a child can be extended. This is a repressive and grisly image in which the spawn becomes powerful like an under-water master and grabs the child, completely reversing the original pleasant image of a frog spawn. The boy now realizes his childish desire of taking frog spawn is wrong, signifying the loss of innocence and the death of the young naturalist.
Both "Digging" and "Death of a Naturalist" are written in first-person narrative. By portraying nature from the poet's own perspective, Heaney allows readers to have a closer connection with the vivid natural world. Heaney's adept use of writting techniques, such as personifcation, figuration, and onomatopea in both poems provides us with a better understanding of his description. Heaney uses onomatopea to describe the sound of wind, and frogs, such as in "Digging", " a clean rasping sound" (line3), and in "Death of a Naturalist", "coarse croaking" (line24). Heaney's s vivid description and skilled use of diction help us appreciate the hidden messages Heaney has implied in his poems.