Ahoy again!
Are ye ready to set sail once again on the Jar of Dirt?
Well, let’s weigh anchor and begin our voyage! Tonight, we set sail for the Emerald Isle to unearth a long buried treasure. Be wary, maties, for we are about to venture into the dark and the weird, and not all treasure is silver and gold.
This time, our adventure will be a journey into one of the poems
of Seamus Heaney, “Strange Fruit.”
…Strange Fruit
Here is the girl's head like an exhumed gourd.
Oval-faced, prune-skinned, prune-stones for teeth.
They unswaddled the wet fern of her hair
And made an exhibition of its coil,
Let the air at her leathery beauty.
Pash of tallow, perishable treasure:
Her broken nose is dark as a turf clod,
Her eyeholes blank as pools in the old workings.
Diodorus Siculus confessed
His gradual ease among the likes of this:
Murdered, forgotten, nameless, terrible
Beheaded girl, outstaring axe
And beatification, outstaring
What had begun to feel like reverence.
...
This poem is, quite simply, the tale of the discovery of a
bog-mummy.
Throughout the poem, Heaney uses imagery and metaphor to
show that a discovery which may sound rather gruesome is actually far less
terrible than it may seem.
Heaney equates the features of the bog-mummy to elements of
the natural world. He refers to her head as an “exhumed gourd,” her teeth “prune-stones,”
her hair a “wet fern,” and nose a “dark turf clod.” This use of metaphoric
imagery attempts to take the visual of an age old murder victim buried for
years in a bog, buried long enough to become a leathered corpse, and make it
seem as though it is just another part of nature. By taking all of the scarred
and withered features of the body and equating them to ordinary elements of
nature which really prompt no response of disgust, Heaney makes the discovery
seem as though it is simply an ordinary part of the natural world. He makes it
seems as though it is not something which should cause fear or revulsion, but
something that deserved to be treated with something like “reverence.” This
idea is reinforced by the way in which Heaney refers to the mummy’s looks as “leathery
beauty,” stating plainly that the “strange fruit” of the bog is beautiful in
its own way, a “perishable treasure” pulled from the preserving ground.
So, what is the lesson to be learned from this poem, what
message is being sent?
Beauty can be found in even the most unexpected places, no
matter how foul they may at first appear.
…
Well, it would seem that we have once again returned to port
after braving the high seas. I hope that you have enjoyed our voyage, me
hearties!
Until next time!
