Death of a Naturalist (1966) (What is a naturalist? In what sense is one dead?

)

Themes and ideas
Nature Nature is not what it always seem (the innocence and reality of
collecting frogspawn)
Growing up (Passage of time, shift in season) (Childhood is filled with
hope but reality is different loss of innocence sense of disillusionment)
Military imagery
First person monologue

Key terms (characteristic of Heaney in general)
Onomatopoeia
Personification
Simile
Metaphor
Blank verse

First stanza is positive, adventurous, full of wonder but filled with negative
diction

Second stanza is negative, frightened and full of disgust. Full of negative natural
imagery as he describes his horror at a near Biblical plague of frogs who, he
thinks, wants revenge for the stolen frogspawn.

Heaney explains a change in his attitude to the natural world, a sort of before and
after

Flax-dam A flax dam is a pool where bundles of flax are placed for about three
weeks to soften the stems.

Flat heads (connotative of bullets)