English Literature

Contrast Clarke: The Field Mouse

• Both poems describe a summer scene and the thoughts it gives rise to
• Both use simple, everyday language, but in The Field Mouse the scene is full not of joy but of threat (The air hums with jets)
• The ideas in the Clarke poem are more complex, with the harvest scene interrupted by thoughts of war

Heaney: Blackberry-Picking

Another summer scene, with lots of detailed description of nature, but

• Blackberry-Picking contains more ambiguous images - scratching briars, dark blobs burning like a plate of eyes
• By the end, the Heaney poem has become very disturbing, full of rat-grey fungus, stinking and rot
• Unlike the Clare poem, Blackberry-Picking turns out to be less a description of a natural scene, more a metaphor for disappointment

Heaney: Storm on the Island

• Both poems are from a personal viewpoint.
• Both poems are about a storm at sea. Yet Whitman is Patrolling the beach, almost participating in the storm, while Heaney is prepared, protected in his house.
• Heaney uses a simile - spits like a tamed cat turned savage - to describe the wild sea; Whitman uses images that are even more menacing, like Shouts of demoniac laughter.
• Heaney describes the wind attacking - we are bombarded by the empty air. Whitman uses another military image - that of troops moving forward, watchful and firm advancing - to describe the force of the wind. Both images portray the wind as the enemy.       Clarke: Field Mouse:
• Both poems are from a personal viewpoint, but ...
• Clarke writes about hidden dangers of haymaking on a summer's day, in contrast to Whitman's vivid portrayal of a beach during a winter storm.
• Mankind creates the danger in Clarke's poem - man drives the tractor that kills the mouse and man causes wars. However in Whitman's poem the powers in nature create the danger, and mankind is vulnerable.
• Clarke uses personification to illustrate the suffering caused by haymaking (and the war in Bosnia) - the field lies bleeding. Whitman also uses personification - the high sea running ... incessant undertone muttering - to suggest the hostility of the natural world.