Explore the theme of growing up in 'The Early Purges' and 'Death of a Naturalist', by Seamus Heaney.

... Explore the theme of growing up in 'The Early Purges' and 'Death of a Naturalist', by Seamus Heaney. In both 'the early purges', and 'death of a naturalist', Heaney makes childhood, growing up and the loss of innocence the central themes. 'The early purges' accounts a child's realization that the world is a cruel place, through the drowning of kittens on an Irish farm where Heaney grew up. He uses similes such as 'a frail metal sound', to make the poem very visual, and help the reader feel present. These visual images are mostly used at the start of both the poems, when the child is perceived as being still innocent. In death of a naturalist, the first stanza shows how the child saw the flax dam, a clearly ugly thing, as being a place where 'bubbles gargled delicately, / bluebottles wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell.' Heaney glorifies

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