The Early Purges

Introduction: The Early Purges by Seamus Heaney is a deliberately challenging and

shocking poem. In it, the speaker looks back to his childhood and recalls his first experience
of death seeing a worker on the farm on which he lived drowning a bucket of kittens. We
are shown how this experience affected the young boy : initially, he is upset by what he has
seen, but eventually he comes to realise that death is both natural and necessary, especially
on a well run farm.
Written in Iamb Pent
Point 1 How the innocence of the kittens reflects that of the persona
Kittens
- Young/cute, unable to protect themselves immediate idea of cruelty
- soft suggests innocence - purity
- So small that they cant scream tiny din
- frail physically weak they havent developed yet +scraping
Parallels
- He was 6 young and innocent just like the kittens
- suddenly frightened real traumatic experience
- Scraping like mad simplistic simile shows innocence of persona and kittens alike
Point 2 Imagery to convey violence/cruelty + Dan
Purge means to get rid of something unwanted
- Extremely violent connotations
- The in the title tells us he is referring to all of the experiences vivid memories
- first saw this was a repeated/still is a repeated experience
- Early it is premature

Scraggy wee shits rare instance of profanity in Seamus Heaney poetry is extremely
striking
soon soused drenched meaning drowned out + slung on the snout
- Repeated s sound, the sibilance has connections to the devil fall of man sinning

They are inanimate objects

- wet gloves he is distancing himself + his hands arent dirty
- sluiced them chucks them away, no sense of feeling pitched them
- dunghill literally thrown to rot with other shits

sadly hung way to die shows extreme sadness

Tricolon of other innocent animals emphasises the cruelty
Point 3 Change/removed feelings
Sudden change he goes through is interesting:
- bloody pups completely desensitised - caesura emphasises this
- Where they consider change unnatural
- pests have to be kept down necessity part of country life - they serve no
purpose so he doesnt care
He had become Dan Taggot!
No mention of when he actually forgets them there appears to be a large time gap
between stanzas 5 and 6
Does he actually ever forget them? In the fifth stanza he forgets them but the fear came
back caesura emphasises - he has been permanently scarred.
- The last line is monosyllabic which makes it sound unconvincing
- ABA rhymescheme but there is a half rhyme in every stanza where death occurs
- Still subconsciously traumatised such a big impact that he doesnt remember
changing.