Talk:Heaney/@comment-119.17.57.66-20160510045120/@comment-121.219.105.58-20160510100531

While 'Requiem for the Croppies' does discuss the transformative qualities of death, it would be erroneous to say Heaney "shies away" from the brutality of death. The personification described as the "hillside blushed" creates powerful imagery of the blood and death during the battle of vinegar hill.

It would be superficial to claim Heaney doesn't see death as concrete. In 'Death of a Naturalist', Heaney finds himself "sickened" by the things he once found wondrous, recognising that his carefree love of nature was dead, lost when he entered the realm of education. Similarly in 'Limbo' there is a strong sense of finality in the death of the child, death so powerful and unnatural that "even Christ's palms..cannot fish" in the waters where the infant was drowned.