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Elegy Essay - Seamus Heaney - Example Papers

Elegy Essay - Seamus Heaney

‘Casualty’ by famous Irish poet Seamus Heaney is a fiercely political, touchingly personal, and deeply religious elegy. It is part of his later work, published as part of his 5th collection – ‘Field Work’. The poem was written about and anonymous party originally, but a time after releasing ‘Casualty’ Heaney revealed, in an interview, that he had written it for a friend, farmer and eel fisherman named Louis O’Neill. In this essay I aim to closely analyse ‘Casualty’ with reference to three of Heaney’s other elegies -‘Clearances’, ‘The Strand at Lough Beg’ and ‘The Harvest Bow’

Heaney immediately personalises the poem by making the first 20 line stanza a description of Louis O’Neill. He ...

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Heaney uses this line to show the personal connection from him to O’Neill, and how he felt towards the man. In other elegies by Heaney he also personalises parts, showing his personal thoughts of feelings for the dedicatee of the elegy. In sonnet three of the elegy ‘Clearances’, dedicated to his mother, Heaney looks back on a moment of reflection while he was at his mother’s bedside whilst she was unwell;

“I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives- -
never closer the whole rest of our lives”

Heaney reflects on a moment that meant a lot to him, a moment which he says he was never closer to mother for the ‘whole rest of his life’. This moment of connection between him and his mother personalises the poem as it is a feeling he felt, it is his personal feelings towards his mother. The metaphor ‘her breath in mine’ is to signify and confirm that he is actually his mother’s flesh and blood, once again suggesting the closeness of ...

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Elegy Essay - Seamus Heaney. (2011, April 25). Retrieved January 16, 2026, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Elegy-Essay-Seamus-Heaney/98418

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 4/25/2011 03:21:22 PM
Submitted By: jamesk
Category: Poetry & Poets
Type: Free Paper
Words: 622
Pages: 3

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