How Seamus Heaneys Childhood Affected His Poetry Essay

How Seamus Heaneys Childhood Affected His Poetry Seamus Heaney was born in the North of Ireland in 1939 on a farm with his mother and father and nine other siblings. Generally Heaneys poems are influenced by animals through his childhood experience, specifically within The Early Purges and An Advancement of Learning. Heaney grew up near Belfast, during the time of The Troubles, the Irish civil war. Although Heaney left at the height of the war, it is obvious his work reflects his experiences of that time. For an example The Early Purges illustrates this. Where they consider death unnatural. Growing into an environment where Heaney will appreciate that death does exist, the extract interprets killing to be†¦show more content†¦They seem weak and terrified. Heaney uses words such as, purges, the water pumped in, scraggy wee shits, dunghill and dung to suggest that the kittens seem like waste. The title reflects the idea of waste, as the word purges means getting rid of undesirables. The water pumped in, indicates what happens when flushing a toilet, therefore getting rid of waste. Dan Taggart calls the kittens, scraggy wee shits which shows that he doesnt care about the killing of the kittens and treats them as waste to be got rid of. He justifies his actions by suggesting the kittens have no value. A dunghill can be used for getting rid of dung and the kittens are sluiced on the dunghill. The word sluiced means flushed indicating a toilet, so the kittens are therefore treated as waste. Throughout the poem we are viewing the killing through Heaneys eyes and it is evident that he does not like the killing as he uses words such as soft, tiny and frail to suggest the kittens are innocent and harmless. The words, For days I sadly hung round the yard, watching the three sogged remains and the fear came back suggest he was affected by the carnage and murder he witnessed. However, toward the end of the poem he is forced to accept the killing and torture. Heaney became numb, unfeeling and almost deadened. This is shown in the words, I just shrug, Bloody pups. It makes sense. He is almost imitating Dan Taggart at this point to justifyShow MoreRelated Discuss some of the ways in which Seamus Heaney makes use of the past1613 Words   |  7 Pageswhich Seamus Heaney makes use of the past in his poetry Seamus Heaney was born on 13th April 1939 on a farm called Mossbawn in Northern Ireland. He was the eldest of nine children, and was brought up as a Roman Catholic, which later, proved to be a popular topic in his poetry. Heaney’s childhood was full of deaths from relatives and friends which give him a certain amount of understanding about death and corpses, a poem that shows this is ‘The Tollund Man’. In his poetry, Seamus HeaneyRead MoreEssay Postmodernism in Heaneys Poems Bogland and Tollund Man2841 Words   |  12 Pagesapproach to Seamus Heaneys two poems: Bogland and The Tollund Man. 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