Blackberry Picking †Seamus Heaney Analysis Essay

Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet who was natural in Mossbawn farmhouse and spent fourteen years of his childhood at that place. Many of his songs ar based on personal experience Mid-term Break, for example, was based on the death of his younger brother and are laid out in settings akin to those he is familiar to. His poem, Blackberry Picking, is set on a farm and explores the simple luxury of picking fresh, ripe blackberries, his excitement sooner possibly being his own childhood. Thematically, the poem explores the idealistic temperament of childhood, and the importance of waking up to reality as one grows older. The graduation of the poem is filled with a vivid vexationate recollection of the seasonal worker picking of blueberries. The term is late August, and in perfect harvest conditions of heavily rain and sun, the blackberries would ripen. The idealistic views of childhood are brought out in the description of the berries, conveying a scent out of near perfection, At first, near one, a glossy purple clot..You ate that first one and its remove was syrupy. The memory of the blueberries is so vivid that Heaney recounts the stains left upon the tongue and withal the lust mat up for picking. There is a deep sense of intemperance conveyed in this first part of the poem, especially through the use of the reciprocation lust, which would otherwise non normally be used in describing the popular opinions of children. This passion for something as innocent as blueberry picking is something that back end come only in childhood. As the poem progresses, Heaney switches from showing a joyous, childlike recollection to a more wistful, longing tone of an magnanimous whose younger days have passed. He conveys in this part the desperation to hold on to something ethical, We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre, and how holding on is never to any avail, as these berries possibly used as a simile for anything that is almost too good, decay if held on to for too long.This is when a sense of reality is setting in, and the poet is coming to terms with the fact that nothing commode last forever, cr eat a stark contrast with the childish belief that good things never pass. The line, I always felt like crying. It wasnt beautiful ties up both, the childish reaction of crying when hit by the actualisation that something good will not last, and the adult fortitude to the fact that although it is never funfair, such is life. On a more implicit note, the poem deals with the proposition of greed and the dissatisfaction often involved in endeavouring to receive an object of desire. The attempt to acquire great amounts of this object by removing it from its natural setting and cache it leads to its destruction and to the hoarders disappointment. However, it is also implied that lessons on greed are seldom learned, Each year I hoped theyd keep, knew they would not. Even with the k todayledge that his efforts would be in vain, Heaney wr ites around how he was compelled to try and store the blackberries each year, and so bringing out a recurrent greed for the same object.The social organisation and language of the poem aid the reader in better taking into custody and connecting with it. The first part is merely a recollection that provides information what time of the year it is, how the blackberries were collected. There is a lot of en packbment here, and this allows for a salve operate of thoughts for the poet, as well as a better take of connection for the reader. This flow better creates the feelings and emotions of the poem, and allows the ideas in each line to flow into each other and create one seamless picture. The first stanza is peppered with adjectives quite liberally, which almost recreates the bursting sweetness of the blackberries on the tongue of the poet. The description of summers blood in the berries, and the lust for picking them conveys an extremely passionate feeling towards these fruits, a blood lust. The children, scratched by briars, are willing to suffer to gain possession of these sweet fleshed berries. In contrast, the second stanza contains lesser enjambment, and this restricts the flow of thoughts and ideas.The actualisation that the berries have decayed stands in stark contrast to the joy felt when picking and eat the berries on the fields. This realisation is almost jerky, and comes in spurts, opposed the continuous sweetness of the berries in the previous stanza. There are plentiful amounts of imagery throughout the poem, and this helps create clear, vivid images in the minds eye of the reader. The glossiness of the berries and the different colours are tiny expound that one usually wouldnt remember this vivid recollection accordingly establishes clear pictures for the readers. Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam pots this line creates a picture of children marching through the fields with adept about any form of storage they could get their h ands on in order to collect their beloved blackberries. The kids go Round hayfields, cornfields and murphy drills.This listing of different places recreates a mental image of the farm that Heaney describes a place that is possibly close to his heart because it is where he grew up. Besides the visual imagery of the first stanza, auditory imagery is also present in the line, Until the chink bottom had been covered. This makes the reader subconsciously recreate the tinkling sounds of the hard berries hitting the tinned surfaces of the milk cans, pea tins and jam pots, which in turns make the poem even more tangible and lifelike. Although there is honorable about as much imagery in the second stanza as there was in the first, these images are unpleasant and dull. As opposed to the many-sided descriptions given previously, the description of the hoarded berries as having a rat- colour in fungus (and a) stinking juice puts onward undesirable images of the previously sinful and sweet berries. Where the berries in the previous stanza boasted of riotous colours, they are now covered by a dull grey fungus.This contrast in imagery runs parallel with the contrasting themes of childlike passion and the adult realisation that nothing lasts. While the first stanza is colourful, bright and hard like the ideals of childhood, the second stanza is filled with more realistic imagery of loot and decay that follows any over-indulgence, which is something that children, on becoming adults, are pushed to realise. The tone of the poem is joyous and passionate in the first stanza. The joy, however, is less to do with the eating of berries, which is mentioned notwithstanding once You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet, than the picking of the same, which is mentioned multiple times. This conveys the childlike happiness felt in not just eating the blackberries, but also in the process of racetrack through the fields and picking them, which almost seems like a ritual t hat happened every year. As opposed to the happy tone established in the first stanza, the tone of the second is desperate and resigned.Filled with an adult perspective, there is a need to hold on to the sweetness of the berries, the richness of which is now dampened by the idea of the fungus forming on them. It wasnt fair, this line conveys the resignation felt by all of us, and echoed by Heaney- the feeling that something isnt fair accompanied by the realisation that we still have to resign ourselves to that fact because it isnt going to change. On the surface, the poem Blackberry Picking is about the simple joys found in little things like picking and eating blackberries, and the disappointment felt when they rot and decay. Underneath the surface, the poem explores the perfect ideals of childhood that are ruined by the mature realisations of adulthood. It brings out the contrast amongst the two, and reminds the reader that nothing perfect can last forever just another hard reali ty of life.