Monika Trajanoska

Instructor: Mira Bekar

Mel 5 Writing
Nov 16, 2014

Summary of the poem Punishment by Seamus Heaney

Punishment by Seamus Heaney is a poem about the punishment of innocent people who
did something out of order. The poet connects two similar events: the punishment of a young
unfaithful girl in 1st century A.D. and 20th century punishment of Irish girls who dated British
soldiers (Kalina Maleska, 2012).This summary provides the idea of a deeply rooted human
pattern to revenge and punish those who commit crime in contrast with the understanding and
compassion of the poet.
The poet identifies with the young girl and feels compassion for her, he can feel the tug
of the halter at the nape and he can see her drowned body . He imagines the way she is
tortured and then killed, buried alive in the bog. The villagers had undressed her, shaved her
head, blindfolded her eyes, tighten her neck with a rope. He expresses feelings for the victim, his
poor scapegoat, but he would remain silent, he would not defend her. He would have stood
numb even in the more recent event with the Irish girls who were tied to the rails. In a
contemporary civilised society, this was not a legitimate punishment, but executed by IRA
representatives to punish the girls for their romance with the British soldiers (ibid:9).
The poem expresses the poets compassion and empathy for the punished victims and
unjustification of the tortures. He implies the idea that even in a civilised contemporary world,
people still have the tendecy to punish. Even though the poet condems the tortures, he
understands the human primitive instinct for punishing (ibid:11).
References:
Kalina Maleska. (2012). Literary Attempts to Evade control over Discourse: Macedonian- English
Comparative view. SLOVO , 24 (NO.2), 96-113.