Death and Transformation

Prompt: Within Heaney's poetry death often has a transformative quality.

Critique 2
Many of Heaney's poems discuss death. While most make use of literal death, Death of a Naturalist uses the idea of death in more of a metaphorical sense. Death of a Naturalist discusses how as a child, Heaney would love to collect the frog eggs at the "flax-dam" every spring and then "watch and wait" for the "fattening dots to burst into nimble-swimming tadpoles", until at school, his teacher, Miss Walls, explains how frogs reproduce. This meant nothing to Heaney until he goes again to get more eggs, realising this time that the frogs were actually disgusting. This interest in nature and biology of Heaney's had "died", as he realises that maybe "biology is not for [him]", giving rise to the poem's title, Death of a Naturalist. This metaphorical use of the idea of death shows how Heaney had transformed as person from a little kid collecting frog eggs because, chances are, he didn't know better, to an older person now believing that his old hobby as a child is now disgusting. This shows how a person can change, for better or for worse, if a part of them, such as an interest they have, "dies". ((*~.This critique is incomplete.~*))

Critique 3
Prompt: Within Heaney's poetry death often has a transformative quality.

In Seamus Heaney's poems, death is never one sided,never just The End, but it can also symbolize the true nature of living, sometimes less literally but sometimes more spiritually and emotionally. In the "Death of the Naturalist", the speaker as a young child is portrayed as a young innocent boy, indulging himself within nature's embrace. As he spends time filling "jampotfull of the jellied specks" which is a description of the toad's spawn, we see that he not only enjoyed going to "flax-dam" where nature is at its wildest, but also his fascination with the creatures living within. However, it was not to last as when he grew older, he no longer viewed the creatures as fascinating, but are now like "obscene threats", "gross-bellied" and "angry frogs". It becomes evident that as he grew older, his perceptions had shifted for better or worst, in this sense, he had lost his innocence. However, even though part of him had died and can no longer be accessed again, it has given way to a more needed and a more important part of survival within the adult world: awareness. Awareness for the dangers of mother nature is realized as where "flax-dam" was once his playground it had now became a place of danger, of "vengeance", where if he was to fall too far back into the embrace of nature, "the spawn would clutch it", never letting go. Therefore, in this case, death is due to growing up and the lost of innocence, but sometimes, death is inevitable even in life.