Seamus Heaney’s Blackberry Picking: Man v. Nature of a Life-long Porgression

“Blackberry-picking,” by Seamus Heaney, can be seen as a multi layered cake. There is the obvious physical attraction of a beautifully written poem as there is a grandly frosted cake, but once tasted, the poem can tell different stories as a cake can reveal different flavors. There is a literal reading of the poem, but the poem can also be read as a struggle between man and nature and the natural mental progression from childhood through adult hood.

Man possesses a preoccupation with opposing and fighting the world in which he lives. In spite of all the good that nature has done unto him, man possesses an inherent force, perhaps stemming from the Freudian id (the one of the three divisions of the psyche in psychoanalytic theory that is completely unconscious and is the source of psychic energy derived from instinctual needs and drives), which causes him to create conflict with the rest of the universe. (http://www.m-w.com) Throughout literature, humans have tried to oppose nat...