The Idea of Loss of Innocence and Loss of Life in Gwen Harwood’s and Seamus Heaney’s Poems

Poems by Gwen Harwood and Seamus Heaney use ‘Barn Owl’ and ‘The Early purges’ to explore the idea of loss of innocence and loss of life. In Harwood’s poem ‘Barn Owl’ it is about a young child and the theme of loss of innocence, which is shown when the child becomes faced with maturity and is also experienced with death when shooting a barn owl. This is also seen similarly with ‘The early purges’ by Heaney where the title itself explains and symbolizes the death of a young animal and the poet’s loss of innocence as a child when witnessing the brutality of death ‘I was six when I first saw kittens drown. ’ Both poets present similar themes of death and loss of innocence in their poem.

Each poem shows symbolism that connects with death and loss of innocence, the symbol in Heaney’s poem correlates to the title ‘The Early Purges’ meaning the loss of a young life, ‘Purges’ meaning to get rid of and ‘Early’ to mean something from an early age. This title connects to the symbol of the young kittens who drowned which is when the author as a child loss their innocence and witnessed the brutality of death for the first time.

The symbol shown in ‘Barn Owl’ also in a similar way connects to the title where the symbol is the ‘Barn Owl’ which is a symbol of wisdom that was killed by the child who lost their innocence, before the child thought of death as “clean and final’ but instead the owl “hobbled in its own blood” giving the audience a sense and feeling of disgust when imagery is used to describe death in both poems. Imagery is used in both poems to explore the brutality of death. In Harwood’s poem ‘barn owl’ shows the horror of death when the owl fights to stay alive and in ‘The Early Purges” it also uses imagery in a similar way when Heaney writes imagery to describe the how the kittens died “their tiny din was soon soused. They were slung on the snout of the pump and the water pumped in” this gives the audience an understanding of the agony these kittens are feeling and they feel sympathy and saddened by it. The structure in Heaney and Harwood’s poem is different, in Heaney’s poem it shows him growing up and becoming more mature in each stanza. The first stanza is when he first witnesses death and “frightened, for days I sadly hung Round the yard” as he was terrified as a child and the last stanza is when he no longer cares and is now grown up when shrill pups are prodded to drown I just shrug, 'Bloody pups'. It makes sense “meaning he is used to this treatment and cruelty to animals.

Altogether both poems show themes of loss and how childhood experience progress and change when maturing and experience death that causes themes of loss of innocence and symbols that connect to death.