Blake And Heaney's Attitudes Towards Society

Great Essays
Compare the way Blake and Heaney present strong attitudes towards society.

William Blake and Seamus Heaney were both visionaries and social critics, who presented their strong attitudes towards society through writing critical poems in protest against the corruptions of society. Blake’s poems were based around the transition of idealised agrarian lifestyle changing to an urbanised society, written in the 1700’s. Heaney’s poems were written much later on during the 19th century, to present his strong attitudes towards war, violence, and conflict within society.

Blake and Heaney used metaphorical imagery to present negative consequences from the oppressions of religion and the establishment of the Church towards society. Blake’s The Garden
…show more content…
Heaney’s poem The Other Side is presented in three different sections and three lines per stanza, symbolising the three persons within the Holy Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This complements the main theme of the poem, the politically controversial sectarian divide throughout Northern Ireland, between Protestants and Roman Catholics. He cleverly presents this ecclesiastical separation using structural devices, along with nature to create the understanding of how absurd the division is. This is represented by the ironically close geographical proximity between their lands “to meet our fallow,” suggesting how they are blind to the truth of how close their beliefs are. Furthermore, the long lengths of the lines in the third stanza represents the respect they had for their “neighbour”, as they patiently waited outside for each other to finish before disturbing the other, showing hope for his future idealist visions.

Blake’s The Garden of love is a deceptively simple three stanza poem, made up of four quatrains. The first two stanzas follow a classic rhythmic ABCB scheme, but this is broken in the final stanza. This deprivation of rhythm and the bleak vocabulary “graves” “tomb-stones” emphasises the death and decay taken over by the authoritative churches, a contrast to the once beautiful “green” where “sweet flowers” used to “bore” in the first two

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Poems are pieces of writing that convey meanings through nature and rhetorical devices. Phillis Wheatley uses nature as well as light and dark imagery, reason and love to show the meaning in her poem “Thoughts on the Works of Providence”. Her audience is forced to think about the meanings of the poem through the imagery she uses. Wheatley efficiently uses rhetorical strategies to get her message across about God’s providence, which is how God provides for us. The reader must adequately absorb the imagery in order to understand what the poem is about.…

    • 1101 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Conflict is shown in different ways in the poem, ‘The Man He Killed’, and ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’. One of the major differences seen between the two poems in the portrayal of conflict and war is where war is shown to be fought as a unit; a fight to be fought together, in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’. Lord Tennyson portrays this by his use of repetition at the end of each stanza - “rode the six hundred”. He did this to emphasise how no-one left the rest of the cavalry when they had to fight for their country while knowing that they were most probably going to die. This would make the reader feel both sympathetic for the situation that the six hundred soldiers were put in (a choice between life and death), and proud that…

    • 723 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Poets Seamus Heaney, Robert Frost and Gwen Harwood explore various contrasting poetic techniques in depicting ideas towards the reader. Heaney and Frost portray the idea of becoming overloaded with the concerns of life through contrasting imagery of childhood and nature. Harwood and Heaney look into the idea of the atrocities of war, by Harwood using different techniques of the contrasting understandings of frogs and Heaney’s depiction of people in battle. While continued contrast is seen in Frost and Harwood’s exploration of the idea of givers and takers of life by utilisation of contrasting symbolism in nature.…

    • 981 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “The venerable woods--rivers that move In majesty, and the complaining brooks that make the meadows green; and, poured round all, old ocean's gray and melancholy waste,-- are but the solemn decorations all Of the great tomb of man.” Images of graves, tombs, and coffins are all over this poem and because of this readers have dark images. The poem talks about a couch “Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.” The poem ends with an image of not being afraid of death. People should think of death as something wrapping yourself in a blanket, being comfortable and having a dream-filled sleep.…

    • 418 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A number of poems written during the Romantic period in Europe was in response to the Industrial Revolution and the growing disconnect of faith and spirituality in peoples lives. People moved from a mostly agriculture society to living in urban, industrial settings were they were more interested in working long hours and earning a living. Poets like William Wordsworth and John Keats used their literary works to rebuke society and the industrial movement in their poems such as The World Is Too Much with Us, and Ode on a Grecian Urn. In William Wordsworth’s poem…

    • 408 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The poem uses metaphor to illustrate the religious journey of the speaker. Each stanza incorporates parts of religious foundational doctrine as the speaker discovers the changes that…

    • 1629 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Although both “The Road not taken” (756) and “Nothing Gold can stay” (654) have different meanings they are also similar in many ways. Robert Frost tends to use a lot of nature imagery in most of his poems including both of these. Usually the nature imagery he uses has nothing to do with the true meanings of his poems. He is well known for using nature to describe a situation or place.…

    • 1378 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    House Of Leaves Allusions

    • 2943 Words
    • 12 Pages

    How do mythological allusions in Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves establish the novel’s setting of the house on Ash Tree Lane? Introduction Literature has, since its conception, maintained a close relationship with religion and mythology – not only through religious texts and mythical canon. Much prose and poetry embrace the use of allusions: textual references to other works or bodies, and these references serve to better elaborate a part of the text and/or connect the reader to the text through something familiar (Cuddon 27). One can find prevalent evidence of both these uses of allusion in Mark Z. Danielewski’s 2000 novel House of Leaves.…

    • 2943 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Poems can be written in many different ways resulting in a change of feel while reading the poem. In the poems “At Woodward’s Gardens”, ‘Mending Wall”, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, and “Black Umbrellas” each writer comes at writing a poem differently, but no matter how the writers write their poems they still get their message out. Some of these poems focus on the story while others focus on the message. “At Woodward’s Gardens” tells the story of two boys making piece of glass and making it reflect light onto two monkeys, burning them. As the boys are doing this they get too close to the cage and the monkeys snatch the glass.…

    • 549 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Religion in The Road In The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, one of the most recurring themes is religion. Although it is an underlying theme, it is also one of the most critical. The author tries to show that even in a post-apocalyptic world, where everybody has nothing, and things are beyond tough, religion has a way of coming back so people have hope, and somewhere to put there faith into. Cormac McCarthy uses symbolism, metaphors, and imagery to strongly encourage this theme.…

    • 896 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    When examined together, these poems illustrate diverse reflections of the religious ideas of human origins and how they transform through the progression of life. Consequently, analyzing these poems together, they illustrate how human beliefs develop continually, never to reach absolute awareness due to constant questioning of the unknown. Thus, they represent the duality of human belief concerning ideas on existence at the beginning and the end of a life span. Simultaneously, these poems ask unanswerable questions which torment the human soul. In the “The Lamb”, Blake illustrates the human ability to ask the questions that defines humanity; however, in “The Tyger” identifies that the essence of humanity may never be answered.…

    • 1110 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    English 1 Kristen Brenda Walker Group M April 08 2016 Tuesday 12:20 Douglas Kaze Conduct a critical analysis of the poem “In My Craft or Sullen Art” by Dylan Thomas Dylan Thomas explores a poet’s love and devotion to poetry through the poem “ In My Craft or Sullen Art”. Thomas was a well-known Modernist poet who challenged the primary values of the Western society. His attitude towards society is made evident through the words in the poem.…

    • 1105 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    We all have our own personal memories that are unique to each and every one of us. Memory is often a prevalent theme in poetry, and is seen strongly in the poems of Seamus Heaney and Paula Meehan. In the case of Heaney, his book of poetry Human Chain would be, unfortunately his last, thus understandably the past and his own private memories are recurring in these poems. His poems have a unique ability to unite his special memories with mutually shared histories of others, in an effort to unite us through his poetry. With topics like the transition from a young child leaving home in ‘The Conway Stewart’, there is something we can all identify with.…

    • 843 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Ruins of a Great House” is a symbolic poem written by Derek Walcott that tries to explain the British Imperialism system by referring an abandoned house as a colony under the British Empire. He describes the poor condition of an abandoned house, its surroundings and tries to visualize the effect of British imperialism in the then society. Walcott talks about the effect of British Imperialism to establish colonial slavery, the awful treatment of slaves, and the gradual destruction of the imperialist system. At the very outset of the poem he says, “though our longest sun sets at right declensions and makes but winter arches, it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes… Browne, Urn Burial.”…

    • 874 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Sonnet 73 Poetry Analysis

    • 760 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The importance of nature in Shakespearian poetry is certainly used as a reflection of the speaker’s inner feelings. Sonnet ‘73’ by William Shakespeare takes us on a journey demonstrating the artistry of the natural world. The sonnet is written in iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme of abab, cdcd, efef, gg. It is divided into three quatrains that each use literal nature to metaphorically explore the impact of ageing and death. Shakespeare engages the readers through the metaphoric use of natural symbolisms.…

    • 760 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays