Growing Up in the Poem Death of a Naturalist

'Death of a Naturalist' is concerned with growing up and loss of innocence. The poet vividly describes a childhood experience that precipitates a change in the boy from the receptive and protected innocence of childhood to the fear and uncertainty of adolescence.

Haney organizes his poem in two sections, corresponding to the change in the boy. By showing that this change is linked with education and learning, Haney is concerned with the inevitability of the progression from innocence to experience, concerned with the transformation from the unquestioning child to the reflective adult.

The poem is set out in two sections of blank verse (rhymed iambic pentameter lines).

The poem opens with an evocation of a summer landscape which has the immediacy of an actual childhood experience. There is also a sense of exploration in ?in the heart/Of the town land,? which is consistent with the idea of learning and exploration inevitably leading to discovery and the troubled awareness of experience. To achieve this Haney not only recreates the atmosphere of the flax-dam with accuracy and authenticity, but the diction is carefully chosen to create the effect of childlike innocence and naivety. The child?s natural speaking voice comes across in line 8, ?But best of all?. The vividness of his description is achieved through Haney use of images loaded with words that lengthen the vowels and have a certain weightiness in their consonants,

?green and heavy-headed Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.?

The sound of the insects which, ?Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell? is conveyed by the ?s? and ?z? sounds but also, importantly, acts like a bandage preventing the spread of decay. The images of decay, ?festered?, ?rot...

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...bellied? and ?coarse croaking? remind us that the boy himself is going through changes. Leaving behind the receptive innocence of childhood and a feeling of being at ease with the natural world (the death of a naturalist of the title), the language of the second section expresses the boy's sense of distaste and fear for the physicality and sexuality of adolescence that he is now beginning to experience.

The poem recreates and examines the moment of the child's confrontation with the fact that life is not what it seems. The experience transforms the boy's perception of the world. No longer is it a place for unquestioning sensuous delight. It is a dynamic world of uncertainty. The success of the poem derives from the effective way Haney builds up a totally convincing account of a childhood experience that deals with the excitement, pain and confusion of growing up.