Essay Database

In Seamus Heaney's "Blackberry-Picking" the use of vivid diction, juicy imagery, infantile rhythm, and simple form conveys to the reader the deeper meaning of life's own mortality and childhood's innocence through the literal description of a memorable adolescent experience. The poems simple form engulfs the reader into an almost reminiscent conversation with an adult reflecting on a childhood experience. This simple form gives the poem the simplicity and care-freeness that of which a child would …

…fruit is perishable. But just as a man hopes against hope for his father never to die the speaker goes against his own rational mind and "[hopes the fruit will keep]". By using literally devices such as imagery, diction, rhythm, and form Heaney's "Blackberry-Picking" conveys the deeper metaphor of life's own mortality and the innocence of childhood, that is often loss in morality's realization, through a literary depiction of a childhood pastime of picking blackberries.