In the poem ‘Requiem for the Croppies’, Seamus Heaney uses many language techniques to convey the struggle of the people of Ireland during the rebellion against the controlling forces of the English invasion. Throughout this poem, Heaney shows the struggle of the Irishmen during the rebellion through the use of poetic language techniques like alliteration, repetition and personification.
In Heaney’s poem, ‘Requiem for the Croppies’ alliteration is used to show the struggle of Irishmen, during the rebellion. Some examples of these are “reins and rider” and “shaking scythes” which speeds up the pace of the poem, showing the quick movement of the Irishmen around their own country as they try to stay a safe distance from the British attackers.
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There are no breaks to breath in these examples, which symbolize the fact that the Irishmen where unable to rest properly because of the immense struggle they face in trying to out run the British forces, who had horses. The “shaking scythes” shows us how underprepared the Irish are, because they are using farming tools to fight against a well-equipped army. Another example of alliteration in the poem is “Terraced thousands died” which also conveys the same ideas as the previous two examples, but also give a powerful image of the tragic deaths of many Irishmen in their own country by an outsider nation. These examples were used by the poet, to show the struggle against time that the Irish faced during the rebellion, as they struggle to keep up with the pace of the well trained British forces, and are eventually overcome by them. In the poem, the inclusion of repetition is used to show us the victims of the rebellion. This involved the repetition of the word “we” at the beginning of lines three, six and seven. This is used to show us that in the time of extreme struggle that was the 1798 rebellion everyone in Ireland, neighbours, rivals, the poor, the rich, the children and the adults all joined forces to fight the English army. Another segment from the poem that conveys this idea is “The priest lay behind ditches with the tramp”. This show the priest, a member of high importance in Irish society in olden time, and the tramp, the person on the lowest rung of the social ladder, together. These aspects of the poem are used by the Heaney to show that in this tough times of war and rebellion no one is left behind, and everyone is treated equally, because the Irish cannot afford to lose anymore man power, as they were severely outmanned by the British. In ‘Requiem for the Croppies’, Heaney uses personification to show the scale of the effects of the rebellion against Britain had on Ireland.
An example of this is “The hillside blushed, soaked in our broken wave” which gives the hillside of Vinegar Hill the ability to feel embarrassed therefore it blushes. The poet uses this to show the embarrassment of the countries people at how they were unable to gain control over their own land. However, this could also be interpreted as the hillside being soaked in the blood of the Irishmen after defeat, hence the hillside being a blushed colour. This idea is supported by the second part of that line “soaked in our broken wave.” This segment of the line is a metaphor as it compares the falling of all the defeated Irishmen’s bodies to the movement of a rolling wave. This is used by the poet to show the opinions of the modern day Irishmen as they find their lack of independence embarrassing because of the long lengths that their ancestors went to fighting for it.
In conclusion the poem ‘Requiem for the Croppies’ by Seamus Heaney was written using powerful language techniques to convey the story of the Irishmen’s struggles during the 1798 rebellion against the control of the English. This was done through his use of alliteration, repetition and personification throughout the poem and shows his ideals surrounding Irish freedom and his disbelief in how they have not received independence from Britain. Heaney has done this in the hope that by
spreading the stories of the past, he will encourage a new generation to fight for Irish independence.
Paddy’s Lament is about the terrible sufferings of the Irish people during the potato famine and of the cruel treatment that the Irish went through at the hands of the British people. The British did nothing to help the Irish survive when if they just shared their food they could have saved millions of people from a horrible death. They wrote in their newspapers that the Irish were lazy and didn’t want to work. At the time before the famine, the Irish loved their homeland and few wanted to immigrate to other countries. They had little money to buy a passage to America. They would send one member of the family to America and he would get a job to help those back home. As the famine got worse, the English were looking bad to the rest of the world and decided on a plan to ship all the Irish they could to America and Canada. This way they would rid themselves of the Irish problem. The British paid passage to families who would immigrate. The Irish were happy to leave, but the conditions on the British ships were deplorable. They had to stay on deck through the whole voyage, and about one in three people died. So many Irish people died that they became known as coffin ships. When they arrived in New York, the Irish were examined by a health examiner. Some families were separated from others, and children were separated from their mothers. The Irish were taken to tenements to live in. The conditions of the tenements were horrible. There were so many people living in them that the places we...
...veryone else. He wakes up every day ready to crow his symbol to bring on that day. In the poem he is ready to protect all the female chickens, from another cock that could be in there house. He is ready to battle to the death for what he thinks is his. In this poem he uses ridicule, when he is talking about the old man in a terminal ward, and he also uses connotations. Some example of connotations are when he uses words like; enraged, sullenly, savagery, unappeased and terminal.
Stade, George, and Karen Karbiener. “Heaney Seamus.” Bloom’s Literature. Facts on File, Inc. Web. 30 Mar. 2014
Heaney’s “Death of a Naturalist” talks of a moment in Heaney’s childhood, however is metaphorical for aging and the loss of innocence. Heaney uses the first stanza to tell the reader of his memories of the flax dams as being somewhat wonderful by using colloquial language “Best of all was the warm thick slobber” to sound enthusiastic about that particular moment in time. The list of three “warm, thick slobber” is highly onomatopoeic, conseq...
In both poems “ Blackberry Picking” by Seamus Heaney and “After Apple Picking” by Robert Frost, the luxury of picking fruit could be related to a much deeper meaning than just the simple and boring concept. Using literary devices, both poets achieved to portray memorable moments in their life, or in the other case, even death by using hyperbole, imagery, and simile. Firstly by using hyperbole in lines 28- 29 “For I have had too much of apple picking: I am overtired of the great harvest I myself desired”, Frost exaggerates how exhausted he is from “apple-picking” and had done more than he expected to do with his life. In contrast, Heaney uses hyperbole to grab the reader’s interest by reminiscing his childish infatuations of preserving blackberries
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, Seamus. "Opened Ground, Selected Poems 1966-1996." Follower. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1998. 10.
Within the work, Heaney anthropomorphizes both countries. He compares the geological features of Ireland to the ‘tracked and stretchmarked body’ of a woman, whose most intimate identity - here symbolised by the ‘ferny bed’ and ‘bogland’ is invaded by the phallic ‘battering ram’ of an ‘imperially Male’ invader.
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.
Chaos and drudgery are common themes throughout the poem, displayed in its form; it is nearly iambic pentameter, but not every line fits the required pattern. This is significant because the poem’s imperfect formulation is Owen making a statement about formality, the poem breaks the typical form to show that everything is not functioning satisfactorily. The poem’s stanza’s also begin short, but become longer, like the speaker’s torment and his comrades movement away from the open fire. The rhyming scheme of ABABCDCD is one constant throughout the poem, but it serves to reinforce the nature of the cadence as the soldiers tread on. The war seems to drag on longer and longer for the speaker, and represents the prolonged suffering and agony of the soldier’s death that is described as the speaker dwells on this and is torn apart emotionally and distorts his impressions of what he experiences.
The ironic use of rhyme and meter, or the lack thereof, is one of the devices Larkin uses to emphasize his need to break out of industrial society. The typical rhyme scheme is not followed, but instead an ironic rhyme scheme is used in the sonnet in the form of abab cdcd efg efg. Larkin writes this poem as a sonnet but at the same time diverges from what a typical sonnet is supposed to be. He is commenting on society’s inclination to form restrictions on those within it. By writing out of the accepted form of a sonnet, his writing becomes more natural because of a lack of constraints due to following certain rules and fitting a certain form. He breaks free and writes as he pleases and does not conform to society. Just as with the rhyme, ...
... It is estimated over these five horrifying years, that around two million Irish died. One million deaths are attributed to starvation while another million is attributed to immigration and sickness. It has taken many years for the Irish to recover the loss of 25% of their population, many of these deaths being children and the elderly. This led to an immense age gap in the general population. The Irish have also been to slow to recover from the emotional and political toll that the famine had on Ireland’s people. To remember and learn from past mistakes, the Irish built an Irish Potato Famine Memorial in Dublin. It has grotesque statues of starving people walking down the Custom House Quay carrying what little belongings they had left. This is a haunting reminder of what hunger and greed can do to a country and how it’s influence can spread across the entire world.
With this being said Heaney uses similes and denotations throughout his poem to put in a sense of tone in the poem to help the readers get a better understanding of what the people were going through when they would see soldiers walking about. According to Dictionary.com (“Simile”, 2016). “A simile is a figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared.” This is being used in line 18 where it says “standing there like youngsters” (Heaney, n.d.). This interprets how men working would pause and observe what was going on and the soldiers marching by just like kids would do when they see something remarkable. Heaney also uses Denotation. Which according to Dictionary.com, “Denotation is the explicit or direct meaning or set of meanings of a word or expression, as distinguished from the ideas or meanings associated with it or suggested by it.” This is being showed in the poem throughout various lines. It’s being showed when he writes, “They would have heard the screaming, / Then heard it stop and had a view of us / In our gloves and aprons / coming down the hill” (lines 6-9), this evokes an image showing that what is being told and said is what is truly happening. That the soldiers were so close to them that they could hear the slightest scream of a pig being
James Joyce emerged as a radical new narrative writer in modern times. Joyce conveyed this new writing style through his stylistic devices such as the stream of consciousness, and a complex set of mythic parallels and literary parodies. This mythic parallel is called an epiphany. “The Dead” by Joyce was written as a part of Joyce’s collection called “The Dubliners”. Joyce’s influence behind writing the short story was all around him. The growing nationalist Irish movement around Dublin, Ireland greatly influences Joyce’s inspiration for writing “The Dubliners”. Joyce attempted to create an original portrayal of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century. The historical context for Joyce’s written work was the tense times before the Irish-English civil war broke out. An examination of his writing style reveals his significance as a modern writer.
This refrain enforces his disgust at the type of money hungry people that the Irish have become. In the third and fourth stanza, however, Yeats completely changes the tone of his poetry. He praises the romantics of Irish history, such as Rob...