Analysis Of Churning Day And Blackberry Picking By Seamus Heaney

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Seamus Heaney, an Irish poet, has endured a typical rural life; we imagine children running and laughing round the immense trees and grasslands. This differs from nowadays with full of electronics bringing the end of conversation that rural life expresses a true meaning of “family” and memories can be built up with them. Heaney portrays his memorable, unforgettable childhood in a rural area with literary devices such as imagery and conceivable sensory descriptions, including cultural contexts that raise appreciation from the reader. His two main poem; “Churning Day” and “Blackberry Picking” are both written in 1st person narrative, that includes the reader to be in part of activities that poems illustrate: making a butter and picking blackberries. …show more content…

Heaney also hints the pureness of a little boy; narrator by forming the excitement by using first person narrative “I” and “We”, telling the story about the boy’s feeling throughout the activity with the mood of nostalgia and recollection. Both poem have a specific form of recounting a story – “Churning Day” expresses his feeling by introducing a step by step activity till the end of making a butter while “Blackberry Picking” portrays by stating a juxtaposition within the narrator’s feeling throughout the time passed in blackberries: joy as he ate one that “its flesh was sweet” and disappointment that he “always felt like crying” in the last verse. These poem indicate that those activities are annual activities; “each year,” he hoped in 2nd verse of “Blackberry Picking” and “the house would stink long after the churning day” that indicates the skill is passed on after generations and start over as they run out of butter in the concluding verse of “Churning

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