Memorial High, Eau ClaireENGLISH 0616_Blackberry Picking Essay-REVIEWED AND EDITED BY EXPERTS 2021

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Blackberry picking is an activity that most people wouldn’t think much of, but in Seamus Heaney’s ​Blackberry-Picking​, he dramatizes the experience in a way that intensifies the meaning and... takes the act of picking blackberries to another level. He also greatly expresses how much sorrow is experienced by the narrator when they find that the blackberries have rotted. By using diction, allusions, similes and imagery, Heaney makes the devastation relatable by investing the audience in the process of the picking. Then, when the end of the poem nears and they realize that the blackberries are infested with mold, they feel the sadness as much as the characters in the poem do. This poem is full of specific, unique diction. Heaney utilizes phrases like “a glossy purple clot”, “summer’s blood”, and “hands were peppered” to show the care that the narrator feels for the blackberries. Heaney chose words that are rich descriptors and that portray, in his opinion, the high quality of the fruit. By choosing such specific diction to represent the process of blackberry picking, the author encourages the audience to adopt the attitude that the narrator has about the wonderful fruit. In the first stanza, the diction creates a celebratory tone, one of praise towards the blackberries. “.. You ate the first one and its flesh was sweet … Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for picking” (ln. 5-8). The characters are entranced by the sweetness of the fruit, and that creates the desire to go picking and collect as many as they can [Show More]

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