Essays on Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney’s “Casualty” is written as an elegy for a friend who was killed in a bombing in Northern Ireland shortly after Bloody Sunday. His friend, who was a Catholic, failed to obey a curfew set in place by the Irish Republican Army. He was...

In his critically acclaimed collection North, contemporary Irish poet Seamus Heaney reveals a very personal side of himself and of his identity as a writer. Although each individual poem explores its own storyline and employs its own metaphors, one common thread seems to unravel throughout...

The Moments of Happiness Despite the variety of cultures and lifestyles throughout the world, there remains a unique element that is integral to every heritage: the universal language of joy. The little things in life are truly the things that matter, as any wise child...

It is often said that the blacker the berry is, the sweeter its juice will be. Such is evident in Seamus Heaney’s “Blackberry-Picking.” Throughout the poem, Heaney uses the symbolism of the ripening and rotting of blackberries to represent youth and death respectively. Heaney takes...

Seamus Heaney paints a picture of Ireland through his poems, at times describing its culture and at other times its politics. In poems like ‘Digging’ and ‘The Follower’ he ascribes a sense of dignity to the act of farming, comparing it to the art of...

‘Funeral Rites’ examines the role of rituals and ‘customary rhythms’ in the ‘arbitration of the feud’ in an Ireland plagued by the incongruous notion of ‘neighbourly murder’. However, in preference to the sterility of ‘tainted rooms’ in which the dead lie ‘shackled’ by religious chains...

According to Gustave Flaubert, “poetry is as precise a thing as geometry,” and thus the meticulous usage of morbid motifs, keen imagery, and phonetic diction can unravel a darker, more complex interpretation in a seemingly innocent poem about reminiscent childhood memories. “Blackberry-Picking” by Seamus Heaney...

Both ‘Before you were mine’ by Carol Anne Duffy and ‘Follower’ by Seamus Heaney present the theme of admiration through their poems. As they both capture the parent-child relationship through the child’s perspective showcasing how they each viewed their parent as a role model whilst...

The poem “Punishment” by Seamus Heaney was written in 1975 as a part of the anthology North. It is a part of Heaney’s bog series, in which he describes the Irish bogland, and the different artifacts and remains that have been found within the Northern...

Poetry is one of the most important and powerful forms of writing because it takes the English language, a language we believe we know, and transforms it. Suddenly the words do not sound the same or mean the same. The pattern of the sentences sounds...

In ‘Requiem for the Croppies’, Heaney presents the reader with a stark image; the ‘broken wave’ that ‘soak[s]’ the ‘hillside’. The ‘broken wave’ evokes a sense of an anti-climax, as a wave may gather momentum, reach its peak, and eventually roll over, possessing a great...

‘The Tollund Man’, as is his ‘sad freedom’, seems tellingly paradoxical in death – ‘naked’ and exposed, yet somehow venerated as a ‘trove’ and a ‘bridegroom to the goddess’. He is destroyed, but elevated as a sacred symbol of serenity after this sacrifice. This peaceful...

Seamus Heaney wrote poems on a wide variety of subjects; from reflecting on his experiences with nature as a child to a period of political turmoil that plagued Ireland in the early 20th century called the “Troubles.” Some of his poems address many issues together...