Paper One: Twice Shy by Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney’s poem “Twice Shy” is the description of a walk that a boy and a girl, presumably two young adolescent lovers, in the warmth of spring. The poem traces the excitement of sexual attraction and primitive love, yet divides when it comes to the appearance of the intimacy, versus the reality of it. While Seamus Heaney’s poem “Twice Shy” seems to portray a natural and conventional attitude of adolescent dating such as the nervousness and indecisive revealed in the poem, the use of various literary devices reveals a message that insinuates the difficulties of emotional turmoil, the scars of heartbreak, the dangers of love, and the desperation to move forward in life.
The structure of the poem is …show more content…
They are all deliberately chosen to create a ripple effect amongst the rest of the poem, and allows each idea to interweave. Firstly, the title of this poem “Twice Shy” is derived from the aphorism “once bitten, twice shy”, which immediately illuminates the speaker’s attitude towards relationships. The allusion and implicit cynicism directs the mindset for the reader, and instantly relates them to this idiom which is commonly known to be used when one has been hurt in the past and intends to love more cautiously in the future. The word “diaphragm” in the second line of the second stanza create connotations of fragility. The diaphragm’s nerve-centre is typically affected by one’s emotions, and can create an unsettling feeling, commonly known as “butterflies”. Heaney uses the metaphor of the sky being a tense diaphragm to hints at the speaker’s fear of the flimsiness of this new relationship. When the diaphragm is tenses or contracts, it means that a person has inhaled, and the only other option is to exhale and relax the diaphragm. Figuratively speaking, in the context of this poem, if the diaphragm is released of its tension, the sky would fall. The hyperbole that the speaker’s world would come crashing down if the smallest mistake tips the night in the wrong direction speaks volumes of his caution. The first line of the second stanza also supports this, where the speaker even …show more content…
The mention of a swan shifts the readers towards understanding the romantic affiliation that the speaker may be referring too. The swan is associated with fidelity and pairing for life, which subtly touches upon the speaker’s desire for lifelong mating. A simile introduces a hawk in stanza two, and this hawk personifies the anxiety, doubt, and the tremulous atmosphere. “As a thrush linked on a hawk” and continuous reference to the prey and hawk also seems like an unlikely comparison to match two lovers, however this reinforces the initial mood of wariness that the title instigates. The speaker also acknowledges that the attraction between him and this woman is simply “mushroom love”, which is apt because it easily describes adolescent love-- short-lived, sudden, and unlikely. This is followed by the use of the words “puffed” and “burst”, which suggests that love can sometimes explode like an atomic bomb, be ulcerous, and runs you out of breath, in
Seamus Heaney’s poem “Twice Shy” is the description of a walk that a boy and a girl, presumably two young adolescent lovers, in the warmth of spring. The poem traces the excitement of sexual attraction and primitive love, yet divides when it comes to the appearance of the intimacy, versus the reality of it. While Seamus Heaney’s poem “Twice Shy” seems to portray a natural and conventional attitude of adolescent dating such as the nervousness and indecisive revealed in the poem, the use of various literary devices reveals a message that insinuates the difficulties of emotional turmoil, the scars of heartbreak, the dangers of love, and the desperation to move forward in life.
The structure of the poem is …show more content…
They are all deliberately chosen to create a ripple effect amongst the rest of the poem, and allows each idea to interweave. Firstly, the title of this poem “Twice Shy” is derived from the aphorism “once bitten, twice shy”, which immediately illuminates the speaker’s attitude towards relationships. The allusion and implicit cynicism directs the mindset for the reader, and instantly relates them to this idiom which is commonly known to be used when one has been hurt in the past and intends to love more cautiously in the future. The word “diaphragm” in the second line of the second stanza create connotations of fragility. The diaphragm’s nerve-centre is typically affected by one’s emotions, and can create an unsettling feeling, commonly known as “butterflies”. Heaney uses the metaphor of the sky being a tense diaphragm to hints at the speaker’s fear of the flimsiness of this new relationship. When the diaphragm is tenses or contracts, it means that a person has inhaled, and the only other option is to exhale and relax the diaphragm. Figuratively speaking, in the context of this poem, if the diaphragm is released of its tension, the sky would fall. The hyperbole that the speaker’s world would come crashing down if the smallest mistake tips the night in the wrong direction speaks volumes of his caution. The first line of the second stanza also supports this, where the speaker even …show more content…
The mention of a swan shifts the readers towards understanding the romantic affiliation that the speaker may be referring too. The swan is associated with fidelity and pairing for life, which subtly touches upon the speaker’s desire for lifelong mating. A simile introduces a hawk in stanza two, and this hawk personifies the anxiety, doubt, and the tremulous atmosphere. “As a thrush linked on a hawk” and continuous reference to the prey and hawk also seems like an unlikely comparison to match two lovers, however this reinforces the initial mood of wariness that the title instigates. The speaker also acknowledges that the attraction between him and this woman is simply “mushroom love”, which is apt because it easily describes adolescent love-- short-lived, sudden, and unlikely. This is followed by the use of the words “puffed” and “burst”, which suggests that love can sometimes explode like an atomic bomb, be ulcerous, and runs you out of breath, in