Seamus Heaney Blackberry Picking

520 Words3 Pages
In the poem “Blackberry Picking,” Seamus Heaney exemplify his work by using blackberries. Each summer, blackberries grow and the speaker picks some of the finest blackberries with excitement and hope that they’ll last; however, all hope is crushed when they don’t. Heaney conveys a deeper understanding of the poem by using simile, diction and appealing to emotion. The speaker begins by comparing the “juicy purple clot” of blackberries to the others that are hard as a knot to emphasize how tasty this kind of blackberry is. Then he/she compares its sweetness to “thickened wine” which “leaves stains upon the tongue and lust for picking.” The speaker clearly shows that the delicious sweet taste of the blackberries makes him/her eager to pick them. The speaker is looking at the positives of the darker blackberries. His/her strong hope makes him have only good expectations of picking blackberries. However, the speaker’s hope crushes as “the big dark blobs (purple blackberries) burned like a plate of eyes.” This comparison simply implies that the speaker’s favorite blackberries are all ruined now. The use of simile helps the speaker explain how his expectation…show more content…
He/she vividly explains “summer's blood was in [purple blackberries] leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for picking.” The taste of this fruit explains the speaker’s desire for picking blackberries. He/she shows the hard work and dedication to pick up every type of blackberries as the speaker described, “we trekked and picked until the cans were full until the tinkling bottoms had been covered with green ones.” This shows that he/she is really excited to pick these blackberries as if they last. Instead, the blackberries became ruined so quickly as if a “grey-fungus, glutting on our cache.” The speaker’s word choice vividly describes how tasty this blackberry is to how disgusting it
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    Seamus Heaney’s poem “Blackberry-Picking”, describes him picking berries in late August with a deeper meaning hidden in his work. He uses devices such as diction, imagery, and metaphors to disguise the meaning in his work. Heaney’s diction reveals meaning about the author. We can tell that she’s not from the city, but the country because of her “hayfields, cornfields, and potato drills.” Every year the author-goes blackberry picking. Also Heaney reference’s “Bluebeard,” a character who murders his

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