Growing Up in the Poem Death of a Naturalist Essay -- Seamus Haney

Death of a Naturalist is concern with growth up and loss of innocence. The poet vividly describes a puerility see to it that precipitates a qualifying in the boy from the receptive and protected innocence of babehood to the fear and uncertainty of adolescence.Haney organizes his song in two sections, corresponding to the change in the boy. By showing that this change is linked with education and learning, Haney is concerned with the inevitability of the progression from innocence to experience, concerned with the transformation from the unquestioning minor to the reflective adult.The poem is set out in two sections of caisson verse (rhymed iambic pentameter stores).The poem opens with an evocation of a summer decorate which has the immediacy of an actual childhood experience. There is also a understanding of exploration in ?in the heart/Of the town land,? which is consistent with the stem of learning and exploration inevitably leading to discovery and the troubled awaren ess of experience. To achieve this Haney not only recreates the atmosphere of the flax-dam with accuracy and authenticity, but the enunciation is carefully chosen to create the effect of childlike innocence and naivety. The child?s natural speaking voice comes across in line 8, ?But best of all?. The vividness of his description is achieved through Haney habituate of images loaded with words that lengthen the vowels and have a certain free weight in their consonants,?green and heavy-headed Flax had rotted there, weighted down by commodious sods.?The sound of the insects which, ?Wove a strong gauze of sound around the fragrance? is conveyed by the ?s? and ?z? sounds but also, importantly, acts like a tie up preventing the spread of decay. The images of decay, ?festered?, ?rot... ...bellied? and ?coarse croaking? remind us that the boy himself is way out through changes. Leaving behind the receptive innocence of childhood and a feeling of being at ease with the natural world ( the end of a naturalist of the title), the language of the second section expresses the boys sense of dislike and fear for the physicality and sexuality of adolescence that he is now beginning to experience.The poem recreates and examines the moment of the childs confrontation with the fact that life is not what it seems. The experience transforms the boys experience of the world. No longer is it a place for unquestioning sensuous delight. It is a dynamic world of uncertainty. The success of the poem derives from the effective way Haney builds up a totally convincing account of a childhood experience that deals with the excitement, pain and confusion of growing up.