Coming of age
Seamus Heaney's poem "Death of a Naturalist" recalls the innocence of the speaker's childhood and his experience becoming more aware of the life in the flax-dam. The speaker in the poem reflects on his childhood habit of taking frog-spawn from the flax-dam and reflects on how Miss Walls, presumably a teacher, taught the speaker and his classmates about frogs; though the speaker does not quote her, his language morphs to echo how she would speak to the children, referring to male and female frogs as “daddy” and “mammy” frogs.
In the second stanza of the poem, the speaker has a new experience in the flax-dam, and his perception of his own actions shifts. He finds that the “angry” frogs have “invaded” the flax-dam, where they are usually absent. They croak loudly and threateningly. The speaker feels sick and afraid, and he flees the scene without taking any frogspawn.
The poem is sensuous, detailed, and onomatopoeic. At the beginning of the poem, the language reflects the speaker’s innocence and wonder. Toward the end, the language remains visceral but becomes more ominous and repulsive. The comparison that Miss Walls makes between the frogs and a nuclear human family has perhaps played a part in sparking the speaker’s empathy for, and fear of, the frogs. The poem focuses on this change within the speaker, and it is unclear whether this change is growth, loss, or both.
Anthropomorphization
In this poem first Miss Walls then the speaker anthropomorphize (project human qualities onto) the frogs. Miss Walls describes the frogs in terms the children will understand, comparing them to a family with a mother, a father, and children. When the speaker then sees the frogs in the flax-dam, he believes they have come to protect and avenge their offspring. Anthropomorphization in this poem both heightens and skews the speaker's understanding of the frogs. He understands now where the frogspawn came from, and the comparison of the bullfrogs to fathers and the frogspawn to children leads him to believe that the frogs intend to hurt him. The speaker does not directly address the misguidedness of this belief, instead letting the narrative stand without any commentary from his present-day self. This allows the reader to exist in the poem as the child does: seeing the frogs not necessarily as they are in reality, but as they are within the mind of a scared, growing child.
Right and wrong
This poem does not specifically address a moral or ethical dilemma; instead it recounts the speaker's experience. This makes for a complex poem, one not limited to a single interpretation. However, the speaker's actions appear to be at least partially motivated by a new understanding of the frogs and therefore a new understanding of his actions. He does not tell the readers about how he reflects on Miss Walls's words, but by bringing them up he implies that this scene was present in his mind as he fled the frogs. Now that he has understood that frogs take on a protective, caring role for their spawn, he has come to understand his prior actions as worthy of retribution.
The speaker's refusal to editorialize this account—to point out that the frogs could not have known he took their spawn—leaves the reader to wonder if the speaker was right to believe the frogs seek vengeance. How primal an instinct, one may ask, is vengeance? Could an animal understand it had been wronged? Or could the speaker have been mistaking protectiveness for vindictiveness?
Conflict
This poem marks the emergence of a new conflict for the speaker. When he finds the frogs in the flax-dam, he describes them through warlike language, comparing them to grenades, invaders, guns, and boats. These descriptions exist in stark contrast to the earlier descriptions of the flax-dam, where the dam and the creatures in it are portrayed as comfortingly passive. The spawn grows near the banks, the water "[gargles] delicately," and the bluebottles weave "a strong gauze of sound" over the scene. In this version of the flax-dam, the speaker is able to visit as he pleases, and the flax-dam does not react to his presence. In the second stanza, the frogs react to his presence; the noise they make, unlike the "gauze" of the bluebottles, is a strong "bass chorus." They move, some of them hopping and the others sitting "like mud grenades, their blunt heads farting." The speaker flees the scene, believing that the frogs are "gathered there for vengeance." Whether or not this is true, the scene has sparked a new awareness of how the speaker understands conflict within the natural world.
Disgust
This poem's heavy focus on the natural world and the way the writer uses onomatopoeic language to describe the scenes are conducive to language that evokes disgust in the reader. Already at the beginning of the poem, the scene described is somewhat repulsive; the descriptions of the rotting flax, the sweltering heat, and the slobber of the frogspawn build a visceral, almost nauseating scene. However, in this part of the poem, the speaker still finds the flax-dam charming. In the second stanza this shifts. The speaker describes the smell of the flax-dam as "rank," and he describes the frogs as "farting" with "loose necks [pulsing]". He interprets the "slap and pop" the frogs make as "obscene threats." This disgust plays into the poem's theme of changing as one matures. As the speaker grows closer to being an adult and further from his innocence, the natural world becomes more foreign and menacing to him.
