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  • Essay / Religious Intolerance Explored in the Bog Poems

    Seamus Heaney wrote poems on a wide variety of subjects; from reflecting on his experiences with nature as a child to a period of political unrest that hit Ireland in the early 20th century, known as the "Troubles". Some of his poems address many issues together and have recurring themes and ideas. One example is a series of poems called Bog Poems: "Bogland", "The Man from Tollund", and "The Man from Grauballe", which share an obvious geographical theme but also show a similar preoccupation with themes like violence , religion and terror. to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Bogland's first poem is a poem that examines Bogs from a more nationalist perspective. Bogs are wetlands that accumulate peat, a deposit of dead plant matter. Bogs are a topographical feature of Ireland and are common in countries in the Northern Hemisphere. The speaker of the poem opens the first stanza with the word “We,” which is a possessive pronoun and conveys a sense of oneness with the earth. In the opening lines there is a contrast between the physical geography of the United States and the Irish landscape, "We have no meadows/To cut through a great sun in the evening", and what appears to be a negative statement is transformed into a positive affirmation. with words like “encroaching horizon” and “unfenced country.” At the same time, the poem highlights the unrealized features of bogs, the layers and layers of the earth, surrounded by a rich history and an “ever-crusting bog” far and beyond. Additionally, the bogs are layered and each layer is a page from a history book, but like an encroaching sun, it reveals nothing at first, thus giving a feeling of absence. Bogs are also used as a metaphor to show connection. from the present to the past through the constancy of the earth, evident in the line “The butter sank under / Over a hundred years” which “was recovered salty and white.” The conservative nature of peatlands is also discussed in "Tollund Man" where Seamus Heaney goes even further by calling the land a "goddess". Tollund Man is a poem full of promising things, including the hopeful pilgrimage “One day I will go to Aarhus”. In this very first line, the tone is deliberate and impatient, however, there is a presence of distance towards the future in relation to the time in which it is spoken. The speaker listens to see the "peat-brown head" of the sacred body, but assumes an impersonal tone in noting the physical characteristics of the Tollund man's body. Later; however, he feels a personal connection to Tollund's man when he says "I will stand for a long time" only after exposing his vulnerability to religious victimization. He then glorifies him again, and this time to the rank of saint. But he uses a more ominous and stronger tone in doing this, he personifies the bog as a deity and likens it to Ireland, feminine and overwhelming in nature “she has tightened her couple upon him”. The type of language used indicates the Tollund Man's helplessness in the face of higher, supernatural forces, but then emphasizes the quasi-divine nature that comes into effect and "works towards the guarded body of a saint", a substitute Christ perhaps, who is left to chance "the lawn-cutters' treasure" for now and will resurrect "his stained face/Rests" again. There is a deliberate attempt to link religion to the circle of violence in an attempt to bring peace. This attempt becomes clearer”.