Life and Death

Prompt: Seamus Heaney's draws on the fine line between life and death

Critique 1
Heaney uses his poetry to highlight the contrast between life and death. Throughout his poem 'Follower' he explores a boys desire to be as brilliant as his father, only to realize that he must be his own person. This is a demonstration of the death of the person he once wanted to be, and the new life of his personal acceptance. Heaney uses slanted rhymes throughout this poem as a suggestion of the boys imperfection and clumsiness. Although, beneath these slanted rhymes he uses 4 lines for each of his stanzas. This is Heaney's depiction of the boy's ability to find consistency and acceptance of himself. The boy's willingness to finally be himself is a demonstration of life as individuality and the death of him as a 'follower'. In 'Death of a Naturalist' he breaks the poem into two individual stanza's as a demonstration of the events that occur in between the death of the person he once was to his new self. The pause between the two stanza's is Heaney's identification of how his experiences (which caused the death of his inexperienced younger self) only assist in brining about different sides of him to the surface.