DEATH OF A NATURALIST

SEAMUS HEANEY
 INTRODUCTION
SEAMUS HEANEY was an Irish poet, playwright and translator. He became a lecturer
at St. Joseph’s College in Belfast in the early 1960s,after attending the Queen’s
University and began to publish poetry. He lived part-time in the United States from
1981 to 1997.
In 2011, he was awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize and in 2012, a
Recognition Award from the Griffin Trust. Heaney received the Noble Prize in
Literature.
Among his best–known works is “DEATH OF A NATURALIST” (1966),
His first major published volume. It consists of 34 short poem and is largely
concerned with childhood experiences.
 POEM IN DETAILS

All year the flax-dam festered in the heart

Of the town land ; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighted down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun .
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.
There were dragonflies, spotted butterflies,
But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water
In the shade of the banks .,
 POEM IN DETAILS

Here, every spring would fill jampotfuls of the jellied

Specks to range on window sills at home,
On shelves at school, and wait and watch until
The fattening dots burst, into nimble
Swimming tadpoles. Miss Walls would tell us how
The daddy frog was called a bullfrog
And how he croaked and how the mammy frog
Laid hundreds of little eggs and this was
Frogspawn. You could tell the weather by frogs too
For they were yellow in the sun and brown
In rain.
 POEM IN DETAILS

Then one hot day when fields were rank

With cowdung in the grass the angry frogs
Invaded the flax-dam; I ducked through hedges
To a coarse croaking that I had not heard
Before. The air was thick with a bass chorus.
Right down the dam gross bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats. Some sat
Poised like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting.
I sickened, turned, and ran. The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it
 THEME
PROCESS OF GROWING UP
Death of a Naturalist is based on the theme of transition from childhood to
adolescence. It describes childhood as a state of innocence and
inquisitiveness . The speaker as a child visits as swampy 'flax-dam' and
explores the creatures that live there - butterflies, dragonflies, and tadpoles.
But, in the second stanza as the speaker grows older and becomes an
adolescent, his relationship to the 'flax- dam' and its creatures changes. It
stops being enchanting and delightful, rather it becomes loathsome and
frightening. This transformation serves as a metaphor for the transition
from the innocent and unthreatening world of childhood to the unknown
and fearsome world of adolescence.
 THEME
HUMAN BEING AND NATURE
Death of a Naturalist is, a poem that talks about the relationship between
people and the natural world. As the title suggests, the speaker begins the
poem, at least metaphorically, as a ‘naturalist’ a scientist who closely
studies nature. But, as the speaker grows up and comes an adolescent and
learns more about human growth it becomes clear to him that he is not
separate from nature. Human beings follow the same natural cycles that
the frogs or any other living creatures follow. It is this realisation that
result in his fear and disgust in the second stanza: he wants to run away
from nature, just to stop participating in it .
At the beginning of the poem, the speaker is a child who observe nature's
rhythms and cycles like a naturalist. However, in the second stanza the
frogs seem 'angry,' seeking 'vengeance' against the speaker for stealing
their frogspawn. It makes him ‘sickened’ to such an extent that he runs
away from the flax-dam in horror.
 TITLE
A Naturalist is a person who studies the nature , especially plants and
animals in the natural surrounding. “DEATH OF A NATURALIST”, the
collection’s second poem , details the exploits of a young boy collecting
frogspawn from a flax-dam. The Narrator remembers everything he saw and
felt at those times. He then remembers his teacher telling him all about frog
in a section that speaks volumes about childhood innocence.
Finally , we here about a trip to the flax-dam that went wrong . He feels
threatened by the grown-up frogs. His interest in nature has gone – this is
the death of a “naturalist” suggested in the poem’s title.
THANK YOU !