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The Barn

The Barn. This poem, like Death of a Naturalist, is a memory of the past. It is about Heaney's experience of working in a barn when he was much younger. Heaney uses vivid similes and imagery to bring the barn to life. It has an almost supernatural feel and, by the end of the final stanza, a real sense of dread and danger..

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The Barn

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    3. Subject and Themes Farm life Danger Fear Imagination Vulnerability Nightmares – childhood fears

    9. Links with other poems… Most obviously links with ‘Death of a Naturalist’ as both poems deal with Heaney’s fear of nature and the ways in which the ordinary can become threatening or evil. The sacks of corn ‘move in like great blind rats’ just as the frogs become ‘great slime kings…gathered for vengeance’. We get the sense from all of Heaney’s poems in the anthology (except for ‘Mid-Term Break’, perhaps) that the childhood experiences of agriculture were not happy times for him or he was unable to fit in with them.

    10. Hints and Tips This is a reasonably easy poem to understand and has a number of key images and techniques that you can write about. Unfortunately, it does not link very easily with most of the other poems, although ‘Death of a Naturalist’ would certainly be a good one. You could also link it to the idea of memories which is also depicted in ‘Miracle on St. David’s Day’, ‘Follower’, ‘Digging’, “Mid-Term Break’, ‘At Grass’, ‘An Unknown Girl’ and ‘Once Upon A Time’.

    11. Example Questions Look again at the poems ‘The Barn’ and ‘Death of a Naturalist’. What do these poems reveal about the imaginations of the childhood Heaney? ‘The Barn’ is a poem about memory. Choose another poem from the anthology which also focuses on memory and compare the ways in which they are depicted.

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