Analysing 'Death of a Naturalist' by Seamus Heaney
I can analyse how Heaney presents the power of nature in the poem.
Analysing 'Death of a Naturalist' by Seamus Heaney
I can analyse how Heaney presents the power of nature in the poem.
These resources will be removed by end of Summer Term 2025.
Lesson details
Key learning points
- Throughout the poem, Heaney uses multi-sensory descriptions to create vivid imagery.
- Heaney creates a grotesque description of the flax-dam, perhaps to foreshadow its capability to be threatening.
- Heaney uses onomatopoeia in the poem to convey the speaker's enthusiasm for, and then later fear of, nature.
- Heaney presents the power of nature by portraying the frogs as an army through the use of a semantic field.
- Heaney perhaps aimed to show man's insignificance vs nature and discourage us from interfering in natural processes.
Keywords
Imagery - the use of words or figurative language to create vivid pictures
Vulgar - rude, offensive or indecent
Multi-sensory - when something appeals to more than one sense at the same time
Common misconception
When analysing this poem, students might not use terminology as well as they could.
Heaney uses a lot of onomatopoeia in his descriptions within this poem, as well as semantic fields and figurative language.
Equipment
You will need access to a copy of the Eduqas poetry anthology for this lesson.
Content guidance
- Depiction or discussion of sensitive content
Supervision
Adult supervision recommended
Licence
This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2024), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).
Lesson video
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