Death of a Naturalist is concerned with growing up and loss of innocence :: English Literature

Death of a Naturalist is concerned with growing up and loss of innocenceDeath of a Naturalist is concerned with growing up and loss ofinnocence. The poet vividly describes a childhood experience thatprecipitates a reposition in the son from the receptive and protectedinnocence of childhood to the fear and uncertainty of adolescence.Heaney organises his poem in two sections, corresponding to the changein the boy. By showing that this change is linked with education and eruditeness, Heaney is concerned with the inevitability of theprogression from innocence to experience, concerned with thetransformation from the unquestioning child to the reflective adult.The poem opens with an evocation of a pass landscape which has theimmediacy of an actual childhood experience. There is also a sense ofexploration in in the heart/Of the townland which is consistentwith the idea of learning and exploration inevitably leading todiscovery and the troubled awareness of experience. To achieve thisHean ey not only recreates the atmosphere of the flax-dam with accuracyand authenticity, exclusively the diction is carefully chosen to create theeffect of childlike innocence and naivety. The childs naturalspeaking voice comes across in line 8 But scoop up of all. Thevividness of his description is achieved through Heaneys use ofimages loaded with words that lengthen the vowels and have a certainweightiness in their consonants ballpark and heavy-headed Flax had rotted there, weighted down by hugesods.The sound of the insects which, Wove a strong gauze of sound aroundthe smell is conveyed by the s and z sounds but also,importantly, acts like a bandage preventing the spread of decay. Theimages of decay, festered, rotted, sweltered and the punishingsun do not seem to trouble the boy in this archetypal section (althoughthey do prepare us for the second section and the loss of innocence)he takes a delight in the sensuousness of the natural world. Theonomatopoeic slobber in effect conveys the boys relish for thetangible world around him. We can further see how he views this worldby the words clotted and change integrity to the boy the frogspawn is likecream and jam, something to be touched and enjoyed.In section two everything changes. This change is marked bydifferences in tone, diction, imagery, movement and sound. The worldis like a shot a threatening place, full of ugliness and menace. However, itis not the world that has changed so much as the boys perception ofit. There is still a strong emphasis on decay and putrefaction, butnow it is not balanced by images suggesting the profusion of life. Thesounds are no longer delicate (line 5), but are coarse, bass and