Seamus Heaney was born in Northern Ireland and was the eldest if nine children.

Heaneys father was a farmer in a rural county Derry and much of Heaneys poetry, including death of a naturalist is about the countryside and farm life of his childhood. Death of a naturalist describes the exploits of a young Heaney collecting frogspawn. He remembers being fascinated by the frogspawn and recollects his teacher telling him about frogs in school. However in the second half of the poem, when the boy returns to the flax dam, he feels threatened and disgusted by the frogs. His interest in nature has died, hence the title of the poem :death of a naturalist. The two verses could stand for innocence and experience.

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The poem, like Seamus Heaney's work, is very nature minded in terms of context. However, he describes the frogs in a very evil, sinister, and menacing way. It is about a child who collects frog spawn from the dam and collects it in jars. He is innocent and unaware of the evil that lurks in the frog spawn. We can see in the poem that the boy is young, when he remembers his teacher teaching him about the frogs, and his way of calling the frogs Daddy frog' and Mammy Frog'.

The poem heavily appeals to the senses, which describes the more sinister parts of nature. Because when people think of nature they usually think of the more beautiful parts of it (e.g. mountains etc.) The poems appeal to senses shows how filthy and grubby nature can be describing the sight, smell, sound, and touch. All of them bring out another grueling picture in the mind. Heaney uses onomatopoeia to appeal to the sound part of the senses. Words like slap, pop, slobber, farting, and croaked illustrates the realism of how the flax-dam is. The use of using onomatopoeia is to describe the nature and the surroundings, and to show the uncertainty that is going through the boy's mind in the second stanza. Sibilant sounds are also used in the poem. Words like slap, slime, sods, and spawn show the uncertainty and the tension that the boy is under. Heaney also uses stop sounds to show his frightful and uncertain mood (Bluebottles, Poised, Grenades, Mud, Farting, Blunt, Kings, Vengeance etc). This stops the reader from flowing which gives a sense of uncertainty. Heaney uses the description of the frogs to convey the uncertainty that the boy is feeling. He describes the frogs as angry', gross-bellied' (which also uses stop sounds). They are described as having loose necks' and blunt heads, farting'. This is used to describe the boy's abhorrence he has for the frogs. He refers to the frogs as great slime kings', which shows, in the boy's imagination, that the...

= Death of a naturalist is about the effects of human beings tampering with the environment. The loss that the child experiences is a metaphor for the loss that humanity will suffer from when the environment seeks revenge for all that has happened to it. = I feel the poem Death of a Naturalist is split into two sections. Firstly about a young innocent Heaney who is excited about learning new facts about frogs and explores the textures of its spawn. In contrast in the second section Heaney is a little older now and portrays a much more dull and almost paranoid view of the environment. This is because he uses words such as \"cowdung\" and \"gross\" which show a disgusting but more aware view of nature. As oppose to playful words like \"jampotfuls\". = I think the tone is more humorous than serious, and although a \"rite of passage\" may be inferred, it\'s a fairly light-hearted one. Heaney intentionally overstates the experience in the title. It\'s hard to take a poem too seriously that features \"blunt heads farting\" as a central image. Perhaps the boy has an extremely active imagination, which is a charming reality in many young children. = Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney is essentially an elegy concerning the loss of childhood imperatives. Heaney betokens his disillusion to the oblivion of simple childhood joys by dividing Death of a Naturalist into two figurative timeframes: prior to the loss and after. Through his strangely attractive descriptions, Heaney encapsulates the delights of children in amateur herpetology, with such lines as bluebottles / Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell. The departure from this simple childhood fascination is explicit in the lines Then one hot day when fields were rank / With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs / Invaded the flax-dam. Frogs are no longer of interest: there are more serious matters at hand to the mind of the adult. Through Death of a Naturalist Heaney bemoans his patently seething belief with a passionate call to remember what has been lost by the coming of age. =

in my opinion seamus heaney created a successful poem that expresses all that is lost as we grow from childhood, our curiosity and facsination for nature. however, it may seems that heaney blames our loss of childhood innocnece on the actions on people around us, in this case metaphorically he blames the nature and the great 'slime kings' and 'angry frogs' that 'invaded the flax dam'. the whole war like imagery seems to reflect heaneys desire to fight for his field...or if u look at this more deeply, fight to keep his childhood which seems to be disappearing with every 'coarse croak'. his new profound voice which indicates coming of age and the beginning of the end of heaney's childhood chapter. M.H aged 16 = Personally i believe that this and blackberry picking both develop the idea of gaining and adult perspective. The first stanzas set the scene, but the extended metaphors in each weave an undertone of uneasiness, which is brought forward in the second stanza.I could be wrong - don't shoot me down, I don't think that everyone here can claim to have the one and only right answer. I can however definitely say that it does not refer to the (recent) irish troubles - the anthology, also titled death of a naturalist was released in the early 60s, so before all of that. ==
This can be linked closely with Blackberry-Picking as: It shows the harshness of nature It shows the good side of nature It shows Heaney as a child There is a sense of decay at the start of the poem with the rotting flax and a sense of oppressive heat daily it sweltered there all together creating an unpleasant feeling. The sun seems like an oppressive leader punishing sun inflicting pain on all beneath it. The onomatopoeia of bubbles gargled delicately creates a calm image, where everything moves slowly due to the heat. The blue bottles are attracted to the smell of the rot, adding to the unpleasant picture. Added to this is the key of the poem, the frogspawn which is described in a more favourable manner to reflect Heaneys fascination with it, as a child. At school he would display his bottles full of tadpoles. There is child-like language used by Heaney to describe Miss Walls, presumably a primary school teacher, telling the children the facts of life in an appropriate manner: how the daddy frog was called a bullfrog and how he croaked There is also a reference to how the frogs help tell the weather, like an old childish tale. The second stanza deals with the harsh side of nature again, on a day with rank fields smelling of cowdung. Here the angry frogs seem a threat and certainly not the pleasant daddy and mummy of stanza one. Nature has a dark side, with the frogs described in a number of unpleasant ways including Alliteration: coarse croaking the harsh c sound creating a violence, adding to the unpleasant, threatening nature of the frogs to the child (Heaney).

Onomatopoeia: the slap and plop were obscene threats, here slap and plop are both hard and unpleasant, almost vulgar sounds, emphasising the vulgar, slimy nature of the procreating frogs. Simile: their loose necks pulsed like sails gives a sense of the movement of the necks of the frogs moving like something man-made. Sails can be large, which also makes this movement seem large and exaggerated. Some sat poised like mud grenades is an explosive image which makes it seem like the frogs may explode at any time, giving a sense of the movement of a typical frog, sitting quite still then suddenly leaping to their next place of rest. This all adds to the dangerous and angry image of the frogs here. metaphor their blunt heads farting is a gross, unpleasant image, making the sound of a fart link to the noise the croaking frogs make, which makes it seem natural but unpleasant and disgusting (also linking to the rotten smell). They are described using personification as great slime kings as if they are the most powerful slimy things you could imagine, superior to all other things and they are gathered for vengeance so there is a huge sense of threat that they will do immense damage. The final image is of Heaneys fear of touching the frogspawn and it clutching at his hand, almost aggressive, like the frogs and overpowering.

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When the boy leaves the frogs at the end of the poem, he is changed, and the disillusion he feels from his experience has become another step on his "metamorphosis" to adulthood. =

This poem is similar to Blackberry-Picking in its subject and structure - here, too, Heaney explains a change in his attitude to the natural world, in a poem that falls into two parts, a sort of before and after. But here the experience is almost like a nightmare, as Heaney witnesses a plague of frogs like something from the Old Testament. The poem's title is amusingly ironic - by a naturalist, we would normally mean someone with expert scientific knowledge of living things and ecology (what we once called natural history), someone like David Attenborough, Diane Fossey (of Gorillas in the Mist fame) or Steve Irwin (who handles dangerous snakes). The young Seamus Heaney certainly was beginning to know nature from direct observation - but this incident cut short the possible scientific career before it had ever got started. We cannot imagine real naturalists being so disgusted by a horde of croaking frogs. The poem has a fairly simple structure. In the first section, Heaney describes how the frogs would spawn in the lint hole, with a digression into his collecting the spawn, and how his teacher encouraged his childish interest in the process. In the second section, Heaney records how one day he heard a strange noise and went to investigate - and found that the frogs, in huge numbers, had taken over the flax-dam, gathering for revenge on him (to punish his theft of the spawn). He has an overwhelming fear that, if he puts his hand into the spawn again, it will seize him - and who knows what might happen then? The poem is set out in two sections of blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter lines). Heaney uses onomatopoeia more lavishly here than in any poem - and many of the sounds are very

indelicate: gargled, slap and plop and farting. The lexicon is full of terms of putrefaction, ordure (excrement or faeces) and generally unpleasant things - festered, rotted, slobber, clotted water, rank/With cowdung and slime kings. In the first section, the poet notes the festering in the flax-dam, but can cope with this familiar scene of things rotting and spawn hatching. Perhaps, as an inquisitive child he felt some pride in not being squeamish - he thinks of the bubbles from the process as gargling delicately. He is confident in taking the frogspawn - he does it every year, and watches the jellied specks become fattening dots then turn into tadpoles. He has an almost scientific interest in knowing the proper names (bullfrog and frogspawn) rather than the teacher's patronizing talk of daddy and mammy, and in the idea of forecasting the weather with the spawn. (Not really very helpful, since you can see if it is raining or sunny by direct observation - no need to look at the frogspawn.) The second section appears like a punishment from offended nature for the boy's arrogance when he sees what nature in the raw is really like, he is terrified. This part of the poem is ambiguous - we see the horror of the plague of frogs, obscene and gathered...for vengeance, as it appeared to the young boy. But we can also see the scene more objectively - as it really was. If we strip away the effect of imagination, we are left with a swarm of croaking amphibians. This may bring out a difference between a child in the 1940s and a child in the west today. The 21st century child knows all about the frogs' habitat and behaviour from wildlife documentaries, but has never seen so many frogs at close range in real life. The young Heaney was used to seeing nature close up, but perhaps never got beyond the very simple account of mammy and daddy frogs. The teacher presents the amphibians as if they were people. The arrival of the frogs is like a military invasion - they are angry and invade the dam; the boy ducks through hedges to hide from the enemy. Like firearms, they are cocked, or they are poised like mud grenades (a grenade is a hand-bomb - the frogs, in colour and shape, resemble the Mills Hand Bomb, used by British soldiers from the Great War to modern times). The poem has some echoes of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner - in a shorter and more comic version: the would-be naturalist is, like the mariner, revolted by slimy things; the Ancient Mariner learns to love them as God's creatures. Heaney indulges in a riotous succession of disgusting descriptions: gross-bellied, slap and plop, obscene threats (suggesting swear words), farting and slime kings.
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Heaneys poem Death of a Naturalist focuses on his experience of collecting and watching frogspawn as a child, and his reaction when the spawn turned into frogs. In the first ten lines of the poem Heaney uses vivid imagery to describe the setting and its sights, smell and sounds. The phrase flax-dam festered in the opening line combines assonance and alliteration, and begins to create the atmosphere of decay. Heavy headed at the end of the second line again uses assonance and alliteration in one phrase to describe the flax that had rotted. The heaviness is emphasised further in the third line, where the flax is weighted down by huge sods. The idea that hot weather has caused the

decay is expressed in line four: Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun, a personification of the oppressiveness of the sun. A gentler image focusing on sound is created in Bubbles gargled delicately in line five. The movement of flies is described with a metaphor: bluebottles / wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell, a fascinating image combining different senses. Line seven hints at the beauty of the scene with its dragonflies, spotted butterflies. In line eight Heaney makes the first mention of frogspawn with the metaphor warm thick slobber, which as a child was best of all to him among the offerings of nature. In line nine he uses the simile grew like clotted water to describe his impression of it. The poem then switches to an account of how Heaney collected frog spawn every spring, filling jampotfuls of the jellied / specks, imagery that again combines alliteration and assonance. The jars were arranged both at home and at school, then carefully observed as the specks turned into nimble-/swimming tadpoles another example of assonance. Lines fifteen to twenty-one (the end of the first stanza) are a very childlike account of how the schoolteacher, Miss Walls, taught Heaneys class about frogs and frogspawn. Simple, childish language features in this section, such as the mammy frog laid hundreds of little eggs; there are four clauses each joined by and in this sentence, just as though it were written by a child. The final sentence of the first stanza continues in the same style, telling us that frogs are yellow in sunny weather but brown / In rain. The last, brief two-word line of the first stanza seems to underline the fact that this is the end of a period of innocence and that a change is forthcoming. The second stanza of twelve lines is much shorter than the first and has a very different tone; the feeling of change is signalled by the opening phrase Then one hot day Unpleasant imagery begins with fields described as rank / with cowdung. At the end of line two and the beginning of line three the frogs are seen as angry and have invaded the flaxdam: they have taken over in a war-like gesture. As Heaney approached he heard a coarse croaking that was a new sound in that setting; in line twenty-six he uses the metaphor The air was thick with a bass chorus to describe how the sound filled the place. Frogs are everywhere and they are ugly, gross-bellied, pictured with assonance in the phrase cocked / on sods. Their flabby necks are described by Heaney with the simile pulsed like sails. The sound of their movements is expressed by onomatopoeia: slap and plop, which obviously disgusted Heaney who felt that these were obscene threats. In line thirty their stance is described by the simile Poised like mud grenades, an image that echoes the war-like connotation of the word invaded in line twenty-four. Heaney again voices his distaste for the sound of the frogs in the phrase their blunt heads farting. He could not face them, and in line thirty-one he sickened, turned and ran, such was his revulsion. He personifies them as great slime kings and in the following line states that they had assembled at the flax-dam for revenge: gathered there for vengeance for stolen frogspawn. Heaneys final line expresses how far his imagination as a child took hold: if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it. This is a nightmare image where the spawn becomes powerful and grabs the child, reversing the original roles. The structure of the poem, where the first stanza is almost twice the length of the first, resembles that of Heaneys Blackberry-Picking. Both poems describe an enjoyable childhood experience in the first stanza which turns sour in the second, linking form to

meaning. The feeling of disillusion and disappointment following pleasure is a common theme in these two poems. Death of a Naturalist links language to meaning as well, the vivid imagery of the second stanza creating a marked contrast with the simple, childlike wording of lines fifteen to twenty-one. There is a wealth of description here and we can sympathise with the childs disgust of the creatures that evolved from his precious jars of frogspawn.
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Seamus Heaneys poem Death of a Naturalist mainly focuses on Seamus experience of collecting and watching frogspawn as a child followed by his reaction on metamorphosis of the frogs from jellies specks He loses his innocence. This poems title is an extended metaphor. The naturalist in Seamus dies as he experiences the transformation from a child to a man. Its a comparison between the metamorphosis and the transformation of the tadpoles and the child into frogs and a man respectively. Heaney's poem 'Death of a Naturalist' focuses on his experience of collecting and watching frogspawn as a child, and his reaction when the spawn turned into frogs. In the first ten lines of the poem Heaney uses vivid imagery to describe the setting and its sights, smell and sounds. The phrase 'flax-dam festered' in the opening line combines assonance and alliteration, and begins to create the atmosphere of decay. 'Heavy headed' at the end of the second line again uses assonance and alliteration in one phrase to describe the flax that had rotted. The heaviness is emphasised further in the third line, where the flax is 'weighted down by huge sods'. The idea that hot weather has caused the decay is expressed in line four: 'Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun', a personification of the oppressiveness of the sun. A gentler image focusing on sound is created in 'Bubbles gargled delicately' in line five. The movement of flies is described with a metaphor: 'bluebottles / wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell', a fascinating image combining different senses. Line seven hints at the beauty of the scene with its 'dragonflies, spotted butterflies'. In line eight Heaney makes the first mention of frogspawn with the metaphor 'warm thick slobber', which as a child was 'best of all' to him among the offerings of nature. In line nine he uses the simile 'grew like clotted water' to describe his impression of it. The poem then... =

In the poem "Death of a Naturalist", Seamus Heaney seems to suggest that humanisation and simplification of essentially foreign and incomprehensible phenomena often occurs through education and authority. Through the dramatic contrast in tone and diction between the first and second stanzas, Heaney emphasizes how observations of the harsh reality and threat of natural hierarchies can shatter childlike navet and admiration for the apparent simplicity and ordered structure of nature. This notion is already implied in the title, "Death of a Naturalist," suggesting that a realisation of the grim realities and aggression in natural structures can abruptly end these simplifications; that it can shatter the child-like awe and elementary understanding mankind tends to have towards an alien entity such as nature. In the first few lines of the poem, Heaney immediately creates a sense of apparent order and humanity in the natural situation he is describing. Through the use of alliteration in "flax" and "festered" in the first line "heavy headed" in the second and by personifying the flax as "heavy headed" and the sun as "punishing," he establishes connotations in the reader's mind of a structure and reality that is understandable in human terms (a type of hierarchy which is easily accepted by a child). This feeling is further intensified in the following lines of the poem, with

the alliteration of "bubbles" and "bluebottles," and further alliteration in the personification of the bluebottles as having "wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell." The image of the "warm thick slobber of frogspawn," which is described as "best of all" and stressed by the simile "that grew like clotted water," aids Heaney to introduce a notion of superficial understanding and admiration of nature on a shallow level. The fact that the narrator is evidently speaking in a child's voice...
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