Study guide
Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney analysis (Grade 9)
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- WJEC EDUQAS
Indepth notes for the WJEC English Literature (9-1) specification.
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Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney (P.14)Narrative The poem describes the memories of a young boy who has been collecting frogspawn from a flax
dam. He later returns and find himself disgusted at the fully-grown frogs.
Contexts Seamus Heaney was an Irish poet who often wrote poems about Ireland, rural life and nature. Death
of a Naturalist was first published in 1966. Flax is a type of seed that grows on a plant that rots as it
grows, giving off an awful odour.
Themes The Loss of Man and the Natural World Transformations – We see three different
Innocence – As the – The degrading relationship transformations: the boy as he matures and
boy matures he loses is expressed through the understands the gravity of his actions,
his childlike sense of poem. At the beginning, we feeling guilty, the frogs as they develop
wonder which see he is excited by nature, into “slime kings” and the change of
dominated the first but this is not the case by the spring into “one hot day”, summer.
part of the poem. end.
Literary Metaphor – the metaphor of the flax Colloquial Language – The colloquial language in stanza
Devices dam being at the “heart of the one as he explains how “you could tell the weather by
townland” expresses the importance frogs too” expresses the boy’s excitement and fascination
of the location but, being polysemous, with nature, as if he was recounting it to a friend. This is
conveys the boy’s love for the area. distinctly not present in the second stanza
Onomatopoeia – Through the use of onomatopoeia in the second stanza, Heaney creates repulsive
imagery that places the frogs in a negative light, a stark contrast to the first stanza’s celebratory mood.
This can be seen in words such as “slap and plop”
Key The way the boy refers to the “Jampotfuls of the jellied specks” is a sweet description that
Language tadpoles with a factual nature implies the initial childlike innocence. Furthermore, he refers to the
in stanza one, describing how frogs as “mammy” and “daddy” frogs. This romanticises nature
“the fattening dots burst despite the fact we are exposed to uglier side of it with words such as
into swimming tadpoles” “festered”. The first stanza draws a fine line between celebratory and
but opts for a more creative pejorative. As the reader is exposed to disgusting imagery in both
and disturbing description in stanzas, this shows that the only true transformation that has occurred
stanza two shows how he has in the boy’s degrading interest in nature, marking “the death of a
lost interest. naturalist” as it were.
The verb “invaded” as well as “mud grenades” are examples of “Coarse croaking” is
metaphors, comparing the flax dam to a battlefield. This creates a hostility cacophonous in its hard-
behind the frogs and the fact the narrator is forced to “duck” it is hitting ‘c’s and this
conveyed he feels victimised. It also shows the power they now possess as reflects the
“great slime kings”, a stark contrast to the boy essentially playing god unfriendliness of the flax
with their spawn, watching them grow in jars. dam in the summer.
Form and The poem is However, Heaney inverses the iambic pentameter, for example as seen on line
Meter written in blank, 15, in which the first syllable is stressed and the second unstressed, before
unrhymed iambic reverting to standard iambic pentameter for the rest of the line. This gives the
pentameter. poem enough variation to still have a solid rhythm but never a droning quality.
Structure The two stanzas are separated by a movement forward in time – the first stanza is set in spring and has
a distinctly celebratory mood around nature, whereas the second stanza is set during the summer as
indicated by it being “one hot day” and uses negative imagery and onomatopoeia surrounding the
frogs, describing them as “great slime kings”, highlighting the transformation they have undergone.
The abruptness of line 21 signals a break between the young, exuberant, interested speaker and the
older, more nervous and frightened older speaker.
Compare The Prelude by William Wordsworth AS Imperceptibly as Grief by Emily Dickinson
s with…
Quotations to remember
All year the flax-dam festered in the heart Flax had rotted there
Of the townland…
… Here, every spring The fattening dots burst into nimble-
I would fill jampotfuls of the jellied Swimming tadpoles…
Specks… … daddy frog… mammy frog…
Then one hot day when fields were rank To coarse croaking I had not heard
With cowdung in the grass and angry frogs Before…
Invaded the flax dam; I ducked through hedges
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned and ran. The great slim kings were gathered there for vengeance.
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