The Unifying Spirit of Seamus Heaney’s ‘Funeral Rites’ Jack Duckett 12th Grade

‘Funeral Rites’ examines the role of rituals and ‘customary rhythms’ in the ‘arbitration of the feud’ in an Ireland plagued by the incongruous notion of ‘neighbourly murder’. However, in preference to the sterility of ‘tainted rooms’ in which the dead lie ‘shackled’ by religious chains of ‘rosary beads’, Heaney’s affinity for the mythological, archaic ‘serpent’ and the pagan times of the ‘sepulchre’ champion a return to an Ireland unified by pre-Christian beliefs, rather than a country fettered by fragmented sectarian violence of religious origin. Only in this ‘triumph’ will the ‘whole country’ overcome the impasse of violence, allowing victims to peacefully ‘l[ie] beautiful’ and ‘unavenged’.

Immediately, the ‘shoulder[ing]’ of patriarchal duty and the ‘lift[ing]’ of the weight of the coffin deaden the atmosphere in the opening stanzas, as the notion of exertion and effort pervades the funeral. This ‘ceremony’ is a static, heavy burden, and this is also exemplified in the monosyllabic ‘dead’, ending on the heavy sound ‘/d/’, possessing a bluntness that accentuates the finality of death, and introduces a somewhat brusque tone to these stanzas. Additionally, the ‘dulse-brown’ of the ‘shroud’ is an exemplar of Heaney’s discord...