Essays on Seamus Heaney

Analysis of issues about “Family” from four poems

Michelle Moran’s poem titled A tribute to family best defines family. It states that family is God’s creation. “But God created families. As only our Lord can” (Moran). Family is also the basis of love, respect, honor and obedience. Family is made up of different parties such as father, mother and siblings each of whom has a beautiful and God-ordained task to fulfil. Family as such comes forth as what is commonly known as nuclear family according to Moran. The poet is honest to appreciate God for creating families from simple union of two people in marriage. “ ...

Analysis of Poems by Seamus Heaney

Analysis of Poems by Seamus Heaney

Blackberry – Picking is a poem by Seamus Heaney, dedicated to Philip Hobsbaum. The poem is a description of Heaney’s childhood down memory lane. It describes his favorite activity of blackberry – picking in August, during harvest time. This, he liked to do along with his friend. The blackberry picking highlights the importance of struggle in everybody’s lives. The very beautiful berries are not left to rejoice in their beauty. They are soon converted into stinking wine, which represents the different facets of life, thus submerging the beauty of the blackberry. Heaney tries ...

The poem “Mid-Term Break” by Seamus Heaney, Irish poet and Nobel Prize recipient, is the story of sorrow and forced growing up (Heaney). The verse about a little boy who faces the death for the first time is enriched by the use of bright imagery, specific verse structure and the narration from the first person. Death is something unfamiliar to the little boy, and narrator is trying to figure out how to behave in this situation and what everybody expects of him. The poet shows the complicated inner feelings of a child who faces the adult world and realizes ...

Abstract

Nowadays, the importance of studying the ancient literature becomes an actual question. From year to year, an amount of worth studying contemporary literary works increases and a lot of students complain that they do not want to read and analyze literary works of the ancient authors. However, they forget that the ancient literary works were the first examples of literature in the history of humankind. They contain information about life and environment in the preceded days and inspire a lot of young writers. The aim of this paper is to prove that the ancient literature is a basis for ...

Seamus Heaney’s “Mid-Term Break”

Seamus Heaney’s poem, “Mid-Term Break,” dramatizes the conflict of denial and acceptance, as the speaker, a boy, returns from school for the funeral of his younger brother. The reader witnesses the literal events as the boy waits at school, returns home to the mourning family, and sees the body of his little brother in the coffin. While the events in the poem seem ordinary and there is little question of what happened, Heaney had good reason to tell this story as a poem and not in prose. A clue to this reason for poetry versus prose comes from literary ...