Death of a Naturalist Analysis

Don't let the name fool you. Blank verse doesn't mean there's nothing going on. Blank verse is made up of unrhymed lines in iambic pentameter. Now, you can probably guess what "unrhymed" means, but...

The speaker is a young boy, probably anywhere from 8-12 years old, judging from his "mammy" and "daddy frog" vocabulary. He's learning the biology basics in school, and takes matters into his own h...

Heaney establishes a strong sense of place right away: "All year the flax dam festered in the heart / Of the townland" (1-2). The poem is set in a rural area, in close enough proximity to nature fo...

In addition to the rhythm of the lines established by blank verse (which we discuss at length in "Form and Meter") this poem has tons of impressive sound effects—even Timbaland would be impr...

Anytime there's "Death" in the title, it's worth paying attention to. What does death make you think of? Dead people? Tombstones? Grief? Loss? Zombies? Here Heaney pulls a fast one on us. No one ac...

In life things aren't always black and white. In fact, it's usually a great, big patch of gray area. Heaney is skilled at showing us the whole picture in a very small frame. Through realistic and d...

While it's not too difficult to follow the action in the poem, there is a lot lying beneath the surface. Much of the poem's meaning comes through between the lines. Bring your all-weather gear, fol...

Heaney is the first Nobel Prize-winning poet from Ireland since W.B. Yeats. You go, Sham. (Source.)Heaney is buds with former U.S. president, Bill Clinton. Unroll the red carpet; we've got some hig...

This poem is a lot grosser than it is steamy, but when the speaker learns about the frogs' reproductive process, his awareness is broadened about sex in general. While he probably doesn't have it a...