Death of a Naturalist Literary Elements

Heaney appears to speak autobiographically in this poem, though the connection is not made explicit. The speaker reminisces about his childhood in Ireland.

This poem is split into two stanzas, the first one longer than the second and the break between them marking a volta, or a change in tone, in the poem. However, the poem has no specific form or meter.

Metaphors

"Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell."

"But best of all was the warm thick slobber
Of frogspawn"

"Right down the dam gross bellied frogs were cocked
On sods;"

"their blunt heads farting."

Similes

"Of frogspawn that grew like clotted water"

"their loose necks pulsed like sails."

"Some sat
Poised like mud grenades,"

Alliteration

"All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland;"

The first stanza uses many "s" noises, which reflects the liveliness of the flax-dam.

Assonance

"into nimble
Swimming tadpoles."

"Right down the dam gross bellied frogs were cocked
On sods; their loose necks pulsed like sails. Some hopped:
The slap and plop were obscene threats."

Poetry

The town where the speaker spent his childhood, presumably in Ireland.

This poem is tinged with nostalgia; the speaker seems to fully inhabit a younger version of himself as he describes his memories. The tone toward the end of the poem grows darker.

The protagonist is the speaker, presumably Heaney himself. In this poem the frogs become antagonistic, though the poem suggests that they act in retribution for their captured frogspawn.

The major conflict occurs in the second stanza of this poem. The frogs "invade" the flax-dam, and suddenly their presence becomes threatening to the speaker. He runs from them,

The climax of this poem appears in the second stanza. The speaker comes to the flax-dam, as he has many times before, but now it has changed; the frogs have invaded it, and he imagines they are there to punish him for taking their spawn. He runs away, convinced of his knowledge that the frogspawn would trap him should he try to collect it.

The great slime kings
Were gathered there for vengeance and I knew
That if I dipped my hand the spawn would clutch it.

"The slap and plop were obscene threats."

Many of the words used to describe the movements and sounds of the frogs are sonically expressive: for example, "pulse," "slap," and "plop." This is characteristic of Heaney's poetry. The descriptions of the flax-dam also use onomatopoeia liberally to evoke the sounds of the creatures living there.