'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.
In a typical family, there are parents that expected to hear things when their teenager is rebelling against them: slamming the door, shouting at each other, and protests on what they could do or what they should not do. Their little baby is growing up, testing their wings of adulthood; they are not the small child that wanted their mommy to read a book to them or to kiss their hurts away and most probably, they are thinking that anything that their parents told them are certainly could not be right. The poem talks about a conflict between the author and her son when he was in his adolescence. In the first stanza, a misunderstanding about a math problem turns into a family argument that shows the classic rift between the generation of the parent and the teenager. Despite the misunderstandings between the parent and child, there is a loving bond between them. The imagery, contrasting tones, connotative diction, and symbolism in the poem reflect these two sides of the relationship.
The verse novel, ‘The Simple Gift’ explores how relationships and place can impact detrimentally on one’s identity and sense of belonging. Herrick uses Billy to highlight how social issues such as dysfunctional families can lead to isolation and loneliness. Using first person narrative, “I”, Herrick in the poem 'Sport' establishes the barriers to belonging. Herrick uses flashback and hyperbole “he came thundering out” to highlight detachment from home prompted by Billy’s abusive alcoholic father. Detailed repetition of “I was ten years old” intensifies the poignant loss of Billy’s innocence and his displacement from a childhood sanctuary. Consequently the poem ‘Longlands Road’, uses personified enjambment, “rocks that bounce and clatter and roll and protest”, to capture the image of an angry boy who is searching for a sense of belonging. Imagery created through vivid descriptive language, “rundown and beat / the grass unmown around the doors”, depicts the impoverishment and disrepair of “Nowheresville”. While Billy’s description of “Mrs Johnston’s mailbox on the ground...” expresses his contempt and frustration. Subsequently, the ramifications of Billy’s discontent, portrayed by the sarcastic statement “It’s the only time my school has come in ...
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...
Structure is also pivotal in Father and Child, the two part structure, Barn Owl And Nightfall, emphasising the opposition between life and death, innocence and maturity, youth and infirmity; all while accentuating childhood as the era which catalyses maturation, internally and physically. The structure also depicts the influence of modernism upon my writing, as...
During the process of growing up, we are taught to believe that life is relatively colorful and rich; however, if this view is right, how can we explain why literature illustrates the negative and painful feeling of life? Thus, sorrow is inescapable; as it increase one cannot hide it. From the moment we are born into the world, people suffer from different kinds of sorrow. Even though we believe there are so many happy things around us, these things are heartbreaking. The poems “Tips from My Father” by Carol Ann Davis, “Not Waving but Drowning” by Stevie Smith, and “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop convey the sorrow about growing up, about sorrowful pretending, and even about life itself.
Therefore, Oliver’s incorporation of imagery, setting, and mood to control the perspective of her own poem, as well as to further build the contrast she establishes through the speaker, serves a critical role in creating the lesson of the work. Oliver’s poem essentially gives the poet an ultimatum; either he can go to the “cave behind all that / jubilation” (10-11) produced by a waterfall to “drip with despair” (14) without disturbing the world with his misery, or, instead, he can mimic the thrush who sings its poetry from a “green branch” (15) on which the “passing foil of the water” (16) gently brushes its feathers. The contrast between these two images is quite pronounced, and the intention of such description is to persuade the audience by setting their mood towards the two poets to match that of the speaker. The most apparent difference between these two depictions is the gracelessness of the first versus the gracefulness of the second. Within the poem’s content, the setting has been skillfully intertwined with both imagery and mood to create an understanding of the two poets, whose surroundings characterize them. The poet stands alone in a cave “to cry aloud for [his] / mistakes” while the thrush shares its beautiful and lovely music with the world (1-2). As such, the overall function of these three elements within the poem is to portray the
... is not at all that he imagined. It is dismal and dark and thrives on the profit motive and the eternal lure its name evokes in men. The boy realizes that he has placed all his love and hope in a world that does not exist except in his imagination. He feels angry and betrayed and realizes his self-deception. He feels he is “a creature driven and derided by vanity” and the vanity is his own (Sample Essays).
At this point of the story it is reflective of a teenager. A teenager is at a time in life where boundaries and knowledge is merely a challenging thing to test and in some instances hurdled. Where even though you may realize the responsibilities and resources you have, there is still a longing for the more sunny feelings of youth.
Although this section is the easiest to read, it sets up the action and requires the most "reading between the lines" to follow along with the quick and meaningful happenings. Millay begins her poem by describing, in first person, the limitations of her world as a child. She links herself to these nature images and wonders about what the world is like beyond the islands and mountains. The initial language and writing style hint at a child-like theme used in this section. This device invites the reader to sit back and enjoy the poem without the pressure to understand complex words and structure.
Poems are often designed to express deep feelings and thoughts about a particular theme. In Theodore Roethke’s poem, My Papa’s Waltz, and Ruth Whitman’s poem, Listening to grownups quarreling, the theme of childhood is conveyed through their details, although we can neither see a face nor hear a voice. These poems are very much alike in their ideas of how their memories pertain to the attitudes of their childhood; however, the wording and tones of the two poems are distinct in how they present their memories. The two poems can be compared and contrasted through the author’s use of tone, imagery, and recollection of events; which illustrate each author’s memories of childhood.
The state of childhood, in much of literature, is portrayed as the ultimate in innocence, both in character and of perceptions of the world. The shattering of this innocence is often used in writing as a plot device for character development. At times it seems that the extent to which the child’s pure outlook has been destroyed is a measure of how dire a situation can be. As with many autobiographical works that deal with lives of strife, Baldwin also repeatedly returns to moments of his childhood. These moments are often visited through anecdote, and capitalize on various aspects of his personality, his opinions, and his career as an author.
It is relatively easy to see the repression of blacks by whites in the way in which the little black boy speaks and conveys his thoughts. These racial thoughts almost immediately begin the poem, with the little black boy expressing that he is black as if bereaved of light, and the little English child is as white as an angel. The wonderful part of these verses is the fact that the little black boy knows that his soul is white, illustrating that he knows about God and His love.
In conclusion, “Fern Hill” by Dylan Thomas demonstrates that at some point in life people will experience reminiscing on the past lifetime. It’s eye opening to see time pass oh so quickly, with death impending, youth is fleeting and infinitely valuable, as well as we do not fully appreciate childhood until it is too late. This poem displays beautiful imagery of how great childhood was, but it comes to a depressing thought at the loss of the beauty of his childhood, and he longs for his youthfulness. In the end, the whole idea of youth and age is
At its fundamental level, adulthood is simply the end of childhood, and the two stages are, by all accounts, drastically different. In the major works of poetry by William Blake and William Wordsworth, the dynamic between these two phases of life is analyzed and articulated. In both Blake’s Songs of Innocence and of Experience and many of Wordsworth’s works, childhood is portrayed as a superior state of mental capacity and freedom. The two poets echo one another in asserting that the individual’s progression into adulthood diminishes this childhood voice. In essence, both poets demonstrate an adoration for the vision possessed by a child, and an aversion to the mental state of adulthood. Although both Blake and Wordsworth show childhood as a state of greater innocence and spiritual vision, their view of its relationship with adulthood differs - Blake believes that childhood is crushed by adulthood, whereas Wordsworth sees childhood living on within the adult.
The consistent pattern of metrical stresses in this stanza, along with the orderly rhyme scheme, and standard verse structure, reflect the mood of serenity, of humankind in harmony with Nature. It is a fine, hot day, `clear as fire', when the speaker comes to drink at the creek. Birdsong punctuates the still air, like the tinkling of broken glass. However, the term `frail' also suggests vulnerability in the presence of danger, and there are other intimations in this stanza of the drama that is about to unfold. Slithery sibilants, as in the words `glass', `grass' and `moss', hint at the existence of a Serpent in the Garden of Eden. As in a Greek tragedy, the intensity of expression in the poem invokes a proleptic tenseness, as yet unexplained.