The Barn by Seamus Heaney pg 19

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The Barn by Seamus Heaney (pg 19)
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The Barn

• This poem, like Death of a Naturalist, is a
  memory of the past. It is about Heaneys
  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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Subject and Themes

• Farm life
• Danger
• Fear
• Imagination
• Vulnerability
• Nightmares childhood fears

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Threshed corn lay piled like grit of ivoryOr
solid as cement in two-lugged sacks. The
musty dark hoarded an armouryOf farmyard
implements, harness, plough-socks.
Opens with two similes grit of ivory suggests
something valuable cement suggests heaviness
threshed the corn has been harvested
two-lugged repeated at end two handles like
ears bringing object to life
musty a stale or mouldy smell
hoarded the word means stashed away suggests
hidden trerasure is in the barn
armoury implies the barns contents of farmyard
implements are war-like
list of three
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cold, uninviting imagery
The floor was mouse-grey, smooth, chilly
concrete.There were no windows, just two narrow
shafts Of gilded motes, crossing, from
air-holes slitHigh in each gable. The one door
meant no draughts
like a prison the purpose of Heaneys imagery
is to make us experience the claustrophobia
gilded motes a mote is a speck of dust. Gilded
means to have the quality of gold. You can
visualise two narrow strips of dust through the
slits in the barn walls highlighted in the sun
from outside
hot, uncomfortable
gable the triangular area at the top of the barn
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All summer when the zinc burned like an oven.A
scythe's edge, a clean spade, a pitch-fork's
prongs Slowly bright objects formed when
you went in.Then you felt cobwebs clogging up
your lungs
simile the zinc is the metal that the tools
were made of you can imagine the heat in the
barn
list of three maintains the steady rhythm of
the poem sibilance - the s sound in these words
emphasises the potential for danger
you addresses the reader directly Heaney
wants us to feel part of the experience
alliteration on c emphasises a particularly
unpleasant feeling of claustrophobia
adverb slowly drives the poem forward
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the verb scuttled associates with the spiders
a need to escape
And scuttled fast into the sunlit yard -And into
nights when bats were on the wing Over the
rafters of sleep, where bright eyes staredFrom
piles of grain in corners, fierce, unblinking.
moves poem forward a sense of restlessness
nightmarish it is only in the dark when the
barn reveals its true menace. Choice of
vocabulary shows how determined whatever lurks in
the darkness really is
rafters of sleep a metaphor image of the
barn follows the narrator into sleep
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The dark gulfed like a roof-space. I was chaffTo
be pecked up when birds shot through the
air-slits. I lay face-down to shun the
fear above.The two-lugged sacks moved in like
great blind rats.
simile emphasises the enormity of the darkness
metaphor chaff inedible parts of the corn
the narrator is nothing better than feed for the
birds
tries to block out the horror he imagines
simile - poem ends with moment of real terror
continues the nightmare theme like a horror
film the sacks are rats coming to get him
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Links with other poems

• Most obviously links with Death of a Naturalist
  as both poems deal with Heaneys 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 kingsgathered for vengeance. We
  get the sense from all of Heaneys 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.

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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. Davids
  Day, Follower, Digging, Mid-Term Break,
  At Grass, An Unknown Girl and Once Upon A
  Time.

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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.