17 pages • 34 minutes read
Seamus HeaneyA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
At the center of this poem is the bog body itself, described in gruesome detail for the audience by a voyeuristic speaker. The body is a symbol of cultural violence, particularly violence done to women, and the speaker’s reaction to the body—sexual and voyeuristic in its empathy—also perpetrates a type of violence upon the victim. The speaker describes the body as “little” (Line 27) and “undernourished” (Line 30), while also calling her “beautiful” (Line 31) and claiming to “almost love” (Line 33) her. The violence the body has taken, in life and death, is the focus of the poem, but the speaker’s affectionate description works to deceive the reader, making that violence itself seem beautiful and sexual in nature. The speaker’s description of the body is marked by reminders of the violence she has endured: “her shaved head / like a stubble of black corn, / her blindfold a soiled bandage, / her noose a ring” (Lines 17-20). Her body, preserved for centuries in the bog, becomes an immortalized monument to that fatal violence, which echoes in modern images of misogynistic punishments.
By Seamus Heaney
Act of Union
Act of Union
Seamus Heaney
Blackberry Picking
Blackberry Picking
Seamus Heaney
Death of a Naturalist
Death of a Naturalist
Seamus Heaney
Digging
Digging
Seamus Heaney
Mid-Term Break
Mid-Term Break
Seamus Heaney
North
North
Seamus Heaney
Scaffolding
Scaffolding
Seamus Heaney
Seeing Things
Seeing Things
Seamus Heaney
Terminus
Terminus
Seamus Heaney
Two Lorries
Two Lorries
Seamus Heaney
Whatever You Say, Say Nothing
Whatever You Say, Say Nothing
Seamus Heaney