Death of a Naturalist Essay Questions

How does this poem use sound, and how does sound guide the movement of the poem?

Heaney is known for his attention to sound, and "Death of a Naturalist" is no exception. In this poem, sound works hard to depict the physical attributes of the flax-dam; the first stanza is filled with words such as "sweltered," "gargled," "gauze," "spotted," "slobber," and "clotted." Many of these words echo each other sonically, and the repeated "s" and "g" noises, in particular, mirror the lively noises of the flax-dam. The second stanza, however, uses shorter, sharper words, such as "cocked," "hopped," "slap," and "pop." These words are as evocative as the ones in the first stanza, but they are tenser and show the change in the speaker's attitude. Even the sentences of the second stanza are shorter than those of the first. The first two sentences of the first stanza are three lines each, and the third sentence is nearly four. The first sentence of the second stanza is long, too, but from there until the last sentence of the poem, each sentence takes up only one or two lines. The effect is a tone that is less whimsical, and more clipped and withdrawn.

What part does Miss Walls play in this poem? Why does she come up at all?

The character of Miss Walls only appears once. She acts as a way to mark the time period of this poem, to emphasize the speaker's youth and to lend the poem realism. Her voice also appears in the poem; though the speaker does not use quotation marks, the phrases "daddy frog" and "mammy frog" are markedly different from the tone of the rest of the poem and seem to be an almost direct quotation. Her appearance in the poem may be a way for the speaker to show how adult authority figures shape children's perceptions, even if they fade into the background and are overshadowed by the more fantastical elements of a child's life, like frogspawn and the flax-dam.

What is the significance of the title, "Death of a Naturalist"?

This poem does not depict any literal death. However, the title helps the reader understand the loss the speaker has sustained. Merriam-Webster defines "naturalism" as an "action, inclination, or thought based only on natural desires and instincts." The speaker, it seems, has grown into a newfound awareness of himself and his foreignness to the creatures of the flax-dam. This poem depicts his severance from nature as he becomes more intelligent and more human.

What is the significance of the final sentence of the poem?

There is childlike innocence left in the speaker in the final lines of this poem; calling the frogs "slime kings" would almost be funny, if not for the fear and revulsion the speaker clearly feels. These lines are significant to the poem because the mention of vengeance makes plain why the speaker's feelings change; he believes the frogs and the frogspawn are seeking retribution for the spawn he has stolen in the past. However, it is interesting that the speaker imagines being sucked into the spawn instead of being attacked by the fearsome frogs. This may be a way for Heaney to show how internal the shift in the speaker is; he has dipped his hand into the frogspawn many times before without such fears. If he merely feared being attacked by the frogs, he could return and take spawn once the frogs were gone. Heaney and the speaker want the reader to understand that he does not flee the dam due to a surface-level fear but due to an internal shift, that shift being the death of the naturalist within him, as the title indicates.