Compare and Contrast Death of a Naturalist, An Advancement of Learning

Compare and Contrast Death of a Naturalist, An Advancement of Learning

and The Early Purges.

In this essay I am going to discuss ‘Death of a Naturalist’, ‘An

Advancement of Learning’ and ‘The Early Purges’ by Seamus Heaney. I

will focus on the similarities and differences between these poems in

terms of what they are about, their language and themes.

The first out of the three poems by Heaney that I have studied is

‘Death of a Naturalist’. This poem is about Heaney as a young child,

exploring a field. He comes across frogspawn and remembers when his

teacher would tell him about how the “Daddy frog was called a bull

frog”, “and how the mammy frog laid hundreds of little eggs and this

was frogspawn”. Heaney then writes about when he used to steal the

frog spawn and put it into a jam jar for school, and how he would

watch them grow into tadpoles. When he finishes describing what he

did, Heaney starts a new stanza. The mood changes in stanza in this

stanza. Heaney describes the frogs as angry, and that they were

croaking in a way he had never heard; “The air was thick with a bass

chorus.” Heaney claims in the poem, that the frogs were angry at him

for stealing the frogspawn when he was younger. Heaney “sickened,

turned and ran.” The second poem entitled “An Advancement of

Learning”. This poem is about Heaney taking a walk along an embankment

and coming across a rat that was crawling out of the river. Heaney

writes “I turned down the path in cold sweat”. However he comes across

another rat. Heaney claims that the rat was staring at him,

“insidiously listening”. He describes the rat having “raindrop” eyes.

Heaney stares back at the rat – “forgetting how he used to panic” when

he lived on a farm. The rat “...

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In conclusion, the main similarities between the three poems are in

the language used. By this I mean that of particular phrases such as

war words and the usage of similes and alliteration and the fact that

they are all about animals and fear. The main differences are that

“The Early Purges” is a different structure to the other two poems. I

have learnt about parts of Seamus Heaney’s childhood and his coping

with fear. I have also learnt different techniques to use in poems,

for example alliteration. I have enjoyed the excitement Heaney builds

up in each poem. My favourite poem is “An Advancement of Learning”

because I can understand and picture everything Heaney describes. Also

it is my most preferred poem due to the fact I can relate to

confronting a fear and not having a path to turn to and then the fear

swam away from me, so I can relate to the story.