Heaney's Poems example essay topic

In our drama class, we have been exploring and improvising scenes based on the stimuli gassed by John Singer Sargent and the two poe tries which are Summer 1969 by Seamus Heaney and Anthem for doomed youth by Wilfred Owen. Both the two stimuli concentrated on the same focus which is war and violence. Seamus Heaney who wrote Summer 1969 is a famous Irish Poet born in 1939, on a farm in Mossbawn, which is in the North of Ireland. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 and was elected Professor of Poetry at Oxford and Oratory at Harvard. His father was particularly careful in talking and his mother especially ready to speak out, a circumstance which Seamus Heaney believes to have been fundamental to the "quarrel with himself" out of which his poetry arises. Heaney's poems first came to public attention in the mid-1960's when he was active as one of a group of poets.

He sees the fate of having been born into a society deeply divided along religious and political lines, one which was doomed moreover to suffer a quarter-century of violence, polarization, inner distrust and war. While Summer 1969 seems quite clear, other parts are greatly enhanced by the remarkable instant access of the internet. The poem shows the artist / intellectual clinging desperately to the vocation of the inspired one; the one who sees into the heart of things and truly understands the evil in the heart of man. He even considers going back to "touch the people. His feelings about the violence somehow seem reinforced by his own environment where women and children away from the Guardia civil. His words have also been a more direct reminder of the riots in Ireland, but the image of Saturn eating his own child is a more vivid insight into the savage nature of mankind.

And as they say the rest is history, chiefly disastrous history of course. "Anthem for Doomed Youth", a wartime epic by Wilfred Owen, is written in codes and conventions to explore the meaning further but by understanding, the poem becomes easier to understand and more is revealed to us. The conventional function for the sonnet is love, but this poem has a sort of anti-love, or rather, a love that turns bad which introduces a touch of irony. Owen explores the violence of war in various examples of comparison. The poem also likens their deaths to a funeral, but one where the bells are shots, and the mourning choirs are the army's bugles.

The drawing down of the blinds, the traditional sign to show that the family is in grief, has been compared to the drawing of a sheet to cover the dead. Repetition and alliteration have also been used to make the poem reflect the ordeal that the army faces: moniotonus boredom in the terrible conditions. No passing bells for the dead - only rifle and machine gun fire. No mourning voice - except for "choirs of wailing shells and bugles calling". The last sestet notifies the world around about the death of the son as it says - the blinds are drawn as a sign of mourning. Suggested Script Ideas Scene 4 A Anthem for Doomed Youth (Part A) Bodies are standing separately on the dim stage.

Once the poem is read, the bodies turn around one by one and the neutral masks are revealed to the audience. The masks move slowly encompassing the rhythm and tone of the narrator's voice. WILFRED OWEN: (emotionally) What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? The masked figure looked around to show that something was passing and then suddenly dropped to the floor in pain. Only monstrous anger of the guns. The masked figure started pulling and hitting another masked figure down to the floor.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle The masked character stood up and started to mime a rifle. Can patter out their hasty orisons. Slowly decreases the movement of the mime of the rifle to a complete stop and then freezes into a still image. I have decided to use this scene where I use the neutral mask for the poem 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' as it was my most effective piece.