Strand at Lough Beg

The Part of this poem that is to be looked at first is imagery in the title of the poem. Shamus Heaney starts us off by giving us this picture of the Strand at Lough Beg, which is the shore of a lake. Already the reader is given the starting point of this story; the Kind of person that Colum McCartney is. Shamus Heaney begins the poem with an image of isolation, confusion, and the loss of safety. Heaney describes what happen the night that his cousin was killed: Leaving the white glow of the filling stations. And a few lonely street lamps among the fields. You climbed the hills towards Newtownhamilton Past the Fews Forest. Out beneath the stars- (lines 1-4). The first few lines describe how his cousin started out in the glow of the gas station where he was, and him driving off to an open area in a town with the stars above him. The light here represented safety. Colum has started off in a situation where he was very close to this light: where there was, most likely, a store and other p...