Casualty (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Seamus Heaney
- First Published: 1979
- Type of Work: Elegy
- Genres: Poetry, Elegy
- Subjects: 1970’s, Violence, Death or dying, Terrorism or terrorists, Ireland or Irish people
The Poem
“Casualty” is a lament for the unknown citizen, an anonymous victim not merely of the social violence of the poet’s native province but also of those tribal attachments that make the violence so aggravated, interminable, and difficult to understand—those elements that are referred to toward the second section of the poem as “our tribe’s complicity.” Since the poet himself was born and reared in Northern Ireland, he speaks with particular, if understated, eloquence and with an intimacy that is typical of his work as a whole on the complex of human...
[The entire page is 1595 words long]
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