Heaney's Use of Language to Explore Childhood in "The Early Purges" and "An Advancement of Learning" In this essay, I will analyze how Heaney's choice of words in his poems depicts his childhood experiences. Specifically, I will closely examine "The Early Purges" and "An Advancement of Learning" to understand how Heaney employs language to provide insight into his upbringing. These poems shed light on the challenges Heaney faced during his childhood. I will begin by analyzing "The Early Purges." We can see from the first few lines the kind of atmosphere in which Heaney was brought up. Heaney uses very dramatic language; he states his age as 'six'. This was the age at which he witnessed the drowning of those kittens, leaving him with a disturbing image for the rest of his life. The phrase 'first time' indicates that he would witness many more cruel incidents of this nature, making it a very strong statement. The phrase 'kittens drown' makes the whole ordeal more traumatizing and cruel because kittens are baby animals, intensifying the impact. From the poem, we get the impression that Dan Taggert does not do young Heaney any favors because he does not care about anything. He is shown drowning kittens and swearing in front of a six-year-old child, calling them 'scraggy wee shits', which shows his lack of concern. The line 'Out on a dunghill he put the dead glossy kittens' further emphasizes his disregard for anything. Heaney employs words beginning with 's', such as 'soft', 'scraping', 'soused', and 'slung', to describe. The repetition of this sound enhances the effect. Additionally, there is a significant amount of alliteration in this poem, with the recurrence of the soft 's' sound. This poem contains many energetic verbs, but I have picked up on one in particular: "bobbing." This verb gives the best sense of action of what a young Heaney had to watch. "Bobbing," which means how the kittens were drowned, shows how they were struggling, which would have been a terrible thing to watch. Words such as "slung," "slogged," "mealy," and "crisp" make everything sound very dramatic and convey horrible images to the reader looking at the poem through the young boy's point of view. Heaney uses the word "Remains," which creates the impression that the kittens are lifeless and what is left of them. "Dunghill" reinforces "scraggy wee shits" in that the kittens are considered worthless and insignificant. Both terms refer to excretion, which further emphasizes the idea that everything is garbage or waste. However, towards the end of "Early Purges," the tone of the poem changes as Heaney matures and realizes why these kittens, or for that matter, any other animal, need to be killed. This gives the effect that he is a normal boy. These images of "kittens drowning," "pulling hen's necks," and "pup prodded to drown" must have traumatized Heaney as a child. For any child growing up on a farm, they would have had the same experience. Perhaps it was not a good upbringing because they wouldn't know any better in later life. Dan Taggert was the main influence in Heaney's upbringing on the farm during this emotive poem. The second poem that will help me understand Heaney's upbringing is "An Advancement of Learning." I will start with the title "Advancement of Learning." This shows that he is transitioning from childhood to adulthood. Heaney is learning new things and overcoming hurdles in his life. In the first stanza, "the river nosed past." This is as if the river is reflective and is reflecting everything above it, or in Heaney's case, everything bad he has done. "Nosed" suggests that the river is trying to avoid something in its way. In the fourth stanza, Heaney writes about how he stared down the rats. He had been scared of them in previous stanzas, but now he was ready to face his fear. "I turned to stare," he says, looking his fear straight in the eye. Heaney has finally overcome his fear.
From the very first word of the poem, there is a command coming from an unnamed speaker. This establishes a sense of authority and gives the speaker a dominant position where they are dictating the poem to the reader rather than a collaborative interacti...
The best teachers have the capabilities to teach from first hand experience. In his memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel conveys his grueling childhood experiences of survival to an audience that would otherwise be left unknown to the full terrors of the Holocaust. Night discloses mental and physical torture of the concentration camps; this harsh treatment forced Elie to survive rather than live. His expert use of literary devices allowed Wiesel to grasp readers by the hand and theatrically display to what extent the stress of survival can change an individual’s morals. Through foreshadowing, symbolism, and repetition, Wiesel’s tale proves that the innate dark quality of survival can take over an individual.
Seamus Heaney’s poem “Blackberry-Picking” does not merely describe a child’s summer activity of collecting berries for amusement. Rather, it details a stronger motivation, ruled by a more primal urge, guised as a fanciful experience of childhood and its many lessons. This is shown through Heaney’s use of language in the poem, including vibrant diction, intense imagery and powerful metaphor—an uncommon mix coming from a child’s perspective.
Heaney’s poem, “Digging” showed that while the boy still loved his father, he did not wish to carry on the tradition of potato digging that had been in his family for generations. For example, Heaney wrote that he had “no spade to follow men like them”(Spence par 1). This quote states that Heaney, although loving his father, did not think he could carry on the tradition. Heaney remembers the way he would bring his grandfather a glass of milk, and would drink the entire bottle, and then would watch his grandfather fall to work once again. This brings about the fact that while still caring a great deal for his father and grandfather, he still would prefer the path of a writer (Glover 542). Ultimately, Heaney chose not to “follow men like them”, and chose instead on becoming a writer. This is backed up later in the poem when Heaney writes “Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests/I’ll dig with it.” Heaney had always watched his father from the upstairs window while he dug, and Heaney would watch and write, and this fanned the fire for Heaney’s desire to become a writer (Pellegrio pa...
only 7, and he left home when he was only 14. He went from town to town doing
The constant rhythm throughout the poem gives it a light beat, like a waltz; the reader feels like s/he is dancing. The rhyme pattern of...
A story of a young boy and his father as they are stolen from their home in Transylvania and taken through the most brutal event in human history describes the setting. This boy not only survived the tragedy, but went on to produce literature, in order to better educate society on the truth of the Holocaust. In Night, the author, Elie Wiesel, uses imagery, diction, and foreshadowing to describe and define the inhumanity he experienced during the Holocaust.
Schwartz, Leslie. Surviving the hell of Auschwitz and Dachau: a teenage struggle toward freedom from hatred.. S.l.: Lit Verlag, 2013. Print.
Not only the words, but the figures of speech and other such elements are important to analyzing the poem. Alliteration is seen throughout the entire poem, as in lines one through four, and seven through eight. The alliteration in one through four (whisky, waltzing, was) flows nicely, contrasting to the negativity of the first stanza, while seven through eight (countenance, could) sound unpleasing to the ear, emphasizing the mother’s disapproval. The imagery of the father beating time on the child’s head with his palm sounds harmful, as well as the image of the father’s bruised hands holding the child’s wrists. It portrays the dad as having an ultimate power over the child, instead of holding his hands, he grabs his wrists.
The Holocaust was a tragic event in history which instilled fear and sorrow in so many. This time can be seen as one without order, because the law at the time said the actions taken were just (epigraph translation). A poet was able, however, to take such a chaotic time in history in the poem The Book of Yolek, and create a more personal attachment (for the reader) to the topic. The poet Anthony Hecht has taken the Holocaust (more specifically the moving of Jewish orphans to a concentration camp) and made it simple and nostalgic, taking a more calm approach to the subject ("5th August 1942: Warsaw Orphans Leave for Treblinka"). By using the form of a Sestina (very precise form difficult to properly do), along with the images, rhetorical use of grammar, and the tone portrayed throughout the piece, Anthony Hecht demonstrates a peaceful outlook can be given to the most chaotic moments in human life (Strand et al. 20). However, he also demonstrates the need for emotional attachment when referring to an occurrence (in history) of the past.
Writing the poem in ballad form gave a sense of mood to each paragraph. The poem starts out with an eager little girl wanting to march for freedom. The mother explains how treacherous the march could become showing her fear for her daughters life. The mood swings back and forth until finally the mother's fear overcomes the child's desire and the child is sent to church where it will be safe. The tempo seems to pick up in the last couple of paragraphs to emphasize the mothers distraught on hearing the explosion and finding her child's shoe.
In Heaney's book of poetry entitled Opened Ground, Heaney shows the readers many different ways in which English rule and influence effected and changed the lives of different people in Ireland. For example, in Two Lorries, Heaney describes a man who is a coal deliverer and his love for Heaney's mother. As the poem progresses, we can see a metamorphosis in the lorry. As the political situation in Ireland escalates and war between different religious factions grows more immanent, the lorry changes from a man who falls in love with Heaney's mother to a raving political and religious war type man who needs to become involved in the skirmish between the religious groups and by doing this eventually blows...
Narrative is a rhetorical structure that distorts reality in order to reveal it. This is an eminently evident actuality in John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Through this distortion, Boyne is able to evoke the reader’s empathy, portray the horror of the Holocaust to a younger audience and convey human’s capacity for inhumanity and indifference. This is achieved by Boyne, primarily through the exaggeration of innocence throughout the novel, the content presented to the audience, and the use of a child narrator. Thus, in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne, narrative is presented as a composition that distorts in order to reveal.
The image of the cat clawing at the reeds stands out the most. A person reading this poem can envision the cat clawing the reeds and screaming as the young boys hold it under the water bringing the cat closer and closer to death with each passing moment. The purpose that the young girl tries to explain is that she understands the way young boys are and that they do not love anything.
poem have a happy mood but it is the way he has made the poem very