Seamus Heaney Clearances Essay

693 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Seamus Heaney the theme of loss in poems

151,600 people die each day, yet the reality of death is still difficult for us to comprehend and the mourning of a loved one never gets any easier. Seamus Heaney created his 1987 elegiac poem ‘Clearances’ which as you would expect is about mortality. He used this to express his feelings towards the loss of his mother and to reflect upon their complicated but intimate relationship, his own aging, and the afterlife. Heaney traditionally conforms to the conventions recurrent within the genre elegy: the lament, admiration, consolation and poetic techniques.
The poem begins the same way in which all elegies tend to do; with a lament. The opening sonnet presents ‘A cobble thrown a hundred years ago’ which was aimed towards his mother’s grandmother, …show more content…

The beginning of the second sonnet is dedicated to displaying in detail the pristine and proper home life Heaney had grown up with. ‘Brass taps shone’ and ‘The china cups were very white and big- An unchipped set’ confirms his mother was a proud homemaker and Heaney’s attention to such details suggests a kind of childlike admiration towards her. He also appears to have an underlying appreciation for his mother who placed large importance to good manners, order, and cleanliness. Towards the end of his poem, Heaney fondly reflects upon a memory of him and his mother peeling potatoes together, which then becomes an insight into their relationship. ‘I was all hers’ strongly indicates the emotional bond Heaney has with his mother. Also through the use of word choice, ‘gleaming’ and ‘pleasant’ transforms this mundane job together into a psychological divine experience. However, they did have a complicated relationship shown through ‘broke the silence’ which suggests that they did not have a communicative or intellectual relationship with one another but more of a spiritual attachment. Therefore, shown through Heaney’s reflection on his upbringing and memories of his mother it is seen he emphasises a great admiration for her and is going through the essential stages of

Show More
Related

  • The Strand at Lough Beg

    1374 Words  | 3 Pages

    Seamus Heamey begins the poem with an image of isolation, confusion, and the loss of safety. Heaney describes what happen the night that his cousin was killed:

    Read More

  • Ian Crichton Smith

    747 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout the poem Crichton Smith successfully creates a haunting portrayal of his guilt-laden grief over his mother's final years and the role he played in her neglect. This neglect is evident in the vivid image of his mother's home combined with her frailty. Crichton Smith adds to this his own role in failing to rescue her and subsequently emphasises the extent to which he is plagued by regret.

    Read More

  • Similarities Between Harwood And Heaney

    1041 Words  | 3 Pages

    Notably, in Heaney’s ‘Mid-Term Break’, death is explored through a school boy receiving news of his brother’s death. Frequent caesura in the poem is used to disrupt the pace set by the iambic pentameter, giving the reader an insight into the confusion and grief felt by the persona as the writing begins to lose its flow. When the persona meets his “father crying –” despite that the father had “always taken funerals in his stride”, the caesura after the mention of crying signifies the distress of the family. Heaney does this to build up the drama, making it more devastating when the brother’s death is revealed. Contrastingly, Frost’s poem ‘Out, out-’, uses personification to emphasise the distress of death. The saw that kills the boy, “snarled and rattled… seemed to leap”, which gives the instrument human qualities, evoking a heightened sense of distress in the reader at death. ‘Mid-term Break’ uses the technique of allusion in regards to the “poppy bruise on his temple”. This line simultaneously emphasises the superficiality of the injury that killed the brother, and alludes to the dead soldiers of the First World War, while the “snowdrops and candles (soothing) the bedside” symbolise death and funerary rituals. These allusions have the effect of evoking mental images from the reader and guiding them to draw parallels between poem and other events, both historical and personal. This technique is

    Read More

  • Martin Espada Bully Summary

    894 Words  | 2 Pages

    This essay is anchored on the goal of looking closer and scrutinizing the said poem. It is divided into subheadings for the discussion of the analysis of each of the poem’s stanzas.

    Read More

  • Poetry Intertextual

    2374 Words  | 5 Pages

    The “Suburban Sonnet” tackles the issue of the harshness of motherhood. Harwood creates the image that the woman in the poem has sacrificed her dreams and aspirations, to become a mother figure for her children. This image is portrayed through Harwood’s contrasting ideas that the way she moves around the kitchen is similar to the complex composition of a fugue. “She practices a fugue, though it can matter to no one now if she lays well or not.” Symbolism and imagery help Harwood achieve the poem’s purpose by creating a sympathetic tone towards the woman’s struggle.

    Read More

  • Comparison of Robert Frost's and Seamus Heaney’s poetry,

    983 Words  | 2 Pages

    ...ttachment or emotion. Again, Heaney repeats the use of a discourse marker, to highlight how vividly he remembers the terrible time “Next morning, I went up into the room”. In contrast to the rest of the poem, Heaney finally writes more personally, beginning with the personal pronoun “I”. He describes his memory with an atmosphere that is soft and peaceful “Snowdrops and Candles soothed the bedside” as opposed to the harsh and angry adjectives previously used such as “stanched” and “crying”. With this, Heaney is becoming more and more intimate with his time alone with his brother’s body, and can finally get peace of mind about the death, but still finding the inevitable sadness one feels with the loss of a loved one “A four foot box, a foot for every year”, indirectly telling the reader how young his brother was, and describing that how unfortunate the death was.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Backyard Blues By Natasha Trethewey

    822 Words  | 2 Pages

    Part I is particularly anecdotal, with many of the poems relating to the death of Trethewey’s mother. The first part begins with an epitaph from the traditional Wayfaring Stranger, which introduces the movement of the soul after death, and the journey towards the ‘home’ beyond. In “Graveyard Blues”, Trethewey examines the definition of “home” as a place of lament, in contrast to the comforting meaning in the epitaph beginning Part I, and the significance of the soul’s movement after death. The ‘home’ described in the epitaph is a place of comfort and familiarity, where the speaker returns to their mother. In contrast, Trethewey describes the ‘home’ she returns to after her mother’s death as a hollow place, the journey back to which is incredibly

    Read More

  • Funeral Rites, explore Seamus Heaney’s attitude to Death in North.

    929 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Funeral Rites, Heaney portrays various attitudes towards death, which are amplified in North as a collection, through its distinct, tri-partite structure. In the first section, Heaney concentrates on his admiration of the ceremony he experienced attending funerals in the past.The transition from past tense to present is confirmed by the strong adverb ‘Now’, and lines 33-39 focus on The Troubles plaguing Northern Ireland since the 1960s. Future tense beginning on line 40 addresses Heaney’s hope for the future, emphasizing the current lack of ritual.

    Read More

  • Do not go gentle into that Good Night and for Eleanor Boylan talking with God

    1199 Words  | 3 Pages

    The end our road that is life, is death and the second we begin to live, we begin to die. A rendition of death and the loss of a loved one is expressed in two different lights in Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that Good Night” and Anne Sexton’s “for Eleanor Boylan talking with God”. Both express the fear and vulnerability of losing someone you thought should live forever Thomas’ message is an imperative one a dark and tangible energy whereas Sexton’s tone is more passive and quiet and more driven by sorrow than anger. But as there is an underlying sense of sorrow in Thomas’ villanelle, there is also a sense of quiet anger.

    Read More

  • A Parent’s Elegy

    1078 Words  | 3 Pages

    Just as Katherine Philips, poet Ben Jonson also wrote two elegies, for his son Benjamin and daughter Mary, entitled “On My First Son” and “On My First Daughter”. Jonson’s son died the early age of seven, and he expressed the strong, personal bond between them through the years Benjamin was “lent” to him. Jonson really comes from a place of sorrow and self-condemnation while writing this elegy. His approach to “...

    Read More

  • The Theme of Loss in Poetry

    2008 Words  | 5 Pages

    the development of poetry and his voice can still be clearly heard. today in the twenty-first century. His poems from ‘Lyrical Ballads’. in his own words, featuring ‘incidents and situations from common life’. This indisputably incorporates the theme of loss in many of his poems.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Seamus Heaney's Progressive Insanities Of A Pioneer

    1330 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the “Digging,” Heaney starts the poem with a self-image, pen in hand. He hears some kind of sound through his window in which case, we come to understand it is his father that is digging. Nonetheless, in line 7, we come to understand that the sound is possibly an echo from the past. In essence, this makes us look into the poem as taking the speaker through not just his father’s memory but also a journey through time in search of self. Further,

    Read More

  • Funeral Blues Analysis Essay

    1109 Words  | 3 Pages

    Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden is a short poem that illustrates the emotions that he is dealing with after the love of his life passes away. The tone of this piece evokes feelings that will differ depending on the reader; therefore, the meaning of this poem is not in any way one-dimensional, resulting in inevitable ambiguity . In order to evoke emotion from his audience, Auden uses a series of different poetic devices to express the sadness and despair of losing a loved one. This poem isn’t necessarily about finding meaning or coming to some overwhelming realization, but rather about feeling emotions and understanding the pain that the speaker is experiencing. Through the use of poetic devices such as an elegy, hyperboles, imagery, metaphors, and alliterations as well as end-rhyme, Auden has created a powerful poem that accurately depicts the emotions a person will often feel when the love of their live has passed away.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast John Keats And Anthem For Doomed Youth

    1486 Words  | 3 Pages

    Although the two sonnets differ in their general structure, the formal elements making up that structure are just as crucial for both of them to organize and contrast the themes and ideas present throughout the

    Read More

  • Gray's “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”

    2194 Words  | 5 Pages

    “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is a poem composed by Thomas Gray over a period of ten years. Beginning shortly after the death of his close friend Richard West in 1742, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” was first published in 1751. This poem’s use of dubbal entendre may lead the intended audience away from the overall theme of death, mourning, loss, despair and sadness; however, this poem clearly uses several literary devices to convey the author’s feelings toward the death of his friend Richard West, his beloved mother, aunt and those fallen soldiers of the Civil War. This essay will discuss how Gray uses that symbolism and dubbal entendre throughout the poem to convey the inevitability of death, mourning, conflict within self, finding virtue in one’s life, dealing with one’s misfortunes and giving recognition to those who would otherwise seem insignificant.

    Read More

More about Seamus Heaney Clearances Essay

Open Document