‘Storm on the Island’, by Seamus Heaney, is set in the Aran Islands, a group of three
islands on the west coast of Ireland. The narrator of the poem begins by describing
how well prepared he and others are for a coming storm. They’ve built their houses
short and wide to withstand the powerful wind. They’ve laid firm foundations and built
strong rooves. There’s no threat of losing crops they’ve grown because the earth is
so dry that they’ve never been able to farm in the first place. There aren't any trees,
either. If there had been trees, they would have kept the islanders company during the
storm because of the sounds that are made as the wind blasts through branches and leaves.
These sounds allow you to listen to what you're afraid of and to forget that the storm is
attacking your house. As the poem progresses and the storm begins, this confidence begins
to disappear. The narrator becomes more and more desperate and afraid.
Let me just point out, this video is a quick recap of the poem – to learn more, watch
my full analysis which I’ll link at the end.
Seamus Heaney was born in 1939 and died in 2013. He was a Northern Irish poet, playwright,
and translator. His early poetry, which includes ‘Storm on the Island’, often focused on
rural life and matters of identity and ancestry. In terms of the ‘Power and Conflict’ cluster,
one way to view ‘Storm on the Island’ is as a poem about the uncontrollable power
of nature. Heaney uses language and structure to present this power.
To begin, the poem consists of one continuous stanza, made up of many long and complex sentences.
Read the poem aloud and you realise there is not much room to stop for breath as the
poem progresses. Both the lack of stanza breaks
and the long sentences symbolise the overwhelming power of nature.
Similarly, the poem contains enjambment, where the sentences run over into separate lines.
We see one example here on-screen, where a single
sentence spans six lines: Heaney’s use of enjambment, like the use
of one long stanza, creates a constant barrage of information, reflecting the constant barrage
of the storm on the house.
Heaney uses the language of conflict to represent the power of nature – We've got ‘blast’,
‘pummels’, ‘exploding’, ‘bombarded’ ‘strafes’ and ‘salvo’. Now this language
points to a secondary meaning to the poem, which I’ll come back to in a minute, but
in terms of the power of nature, the storm is described with the language of conflict
to suggest that it is dangerous and threatening. In the midst of this presentation of nature
as powerful, Heaney uses everyday language such as ‘you know what I mean’. This contrast
between the language of conflict and the language of everyday life seems oxymoronic, but perhaps
is used simply to suggest that this is everyday life to the narrator, as awful as that sounds.
This is further demonstrated when Heaney uses the oxymoron ‘exploding comfortably’.
These two words don’t seem to make sense together, but they reflect how the speaker
has made sense of the storm-filled world he lives in, even if it might not make sense
to us. This idea of the storm being nothing new for
the narrator is also reflected in the poem’s rhyme scheme. The poem contains very little
in the way of rhyme – it’s lack of control reflecting once again the uncontrollable storm.
However, there is half rhyme in the opening and closing couplets.
Consider the opening couplet: Here we see an example of half rhyme.
Half rhyme is where the stressed syllables of the end consonants rhyme, but the vowel
sounds before them do not. Let’s look at ‘squat / slate’. The final consonant sound,
the ‘t’ sound is the same, so there is some rhyme taking place. But the vowel sound
before is the ‘woh’ sound in ‘squat’ and the ‘ai’ sound in ‘slate’. That’s
a half rhyme. We see the same in the final two lines of the poem:
Look at ‘air / fear’. Both have the same consonant sound at the end, the ‘r’ sound,
but the vowel sounds are ‘eh’ and ‘ea’. The use of half rhyme symbolises how the wild
storm refuses order and control; Heaney knew that full rhyme would have been too perfect,
too obviously different to the rest of the poem. Too perfect for a representation of
the chaos of a storm. But the bigger question is why have any rhyme
at all? The answer lies in where the rhyme occurs: at the start and at the end. In rhyme
pattern, then, the poem ends as it begins, with a half rhyme. This gives the poem a cyclical
structure, creating a sense that the storm is inescapable and will continue to occur
time and time again. A second way to read ‘Storm on the Island’
is as a poem about the conflict in Ireland, which I go through in my full analysis linked
at the end. Not everyone sees the poem that way, but why not watch the video and draw
your own conclusions. So in terms of power and conflict, if we see
this as a poem about the power of nature, you might compare ‘Storm on the Island’
with ‘Extract from the Prelude’, ‘Kamikaze’ and ‘Exposure’.
But which other poems would you compare it with, and why? Put your comments in the comments
section.
For more on this poem, pick up a copy of Mr Bruff’s Guide to Power and Conflict poetry,
available exclusively in eBook form and linked in the description. If you like this shorter
style of analysis video do give it a thumbs up and I will make some more, but remember:
this video isn’t intended to tell you everything you need to know about the poem – it’s
a recap for revision purposes. For the full lesson, check out the video linked here on-screen.