Seamus Heaney

... Katie E Payne English Language Seamus Heaney Compare Heaney's feelings towards growth and development from childhood to adulthood, using the literary and linguistic devices in 'Blackberry-Picking' and 'Death of A Naturalist' By Seamus Heaney. Blackberry Picking gives a lucid description of basically, picking blackberries. However it is really about hope and disappointment and how things never quite live up to expectations. 'Blackberry picking' becomes a metaphor for other experiences such as the lack of optimism already being realised at an early age and the sense of naivety looked upon from an adult analysing his childhood; "Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not", consequently a sense of regret. Death of A Naturalist is similar to Blackberry Picking in its subject and structure. Here, too Heaney explains a change in his attitude to the natural world, in a poem that falls also into two parts, a somewhat idyllic past and present torn

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