Punishment (Commentary)

In the poem “Punishment” by Seamus Heaney he uses the image of Irish troubles by drawing a parallel between the young woman killed and events around the speaker in Northern Ireland. The poem compares the Windeby girl with Catholic girls in Northern Ireland, which Heaney mentions in the poem, is her "betraying sisters" (38), who were punished for associating with British soldiers. Heaney seems to write with pity of the girl’s humiliation and final pain, when she had only the ring-like band around her eyes to remind her of love's memories (20-22).

The structure of this poem is broken up into eleven stanzas with four lines in every stanza. Heaney seems to have structured the poem in two halves; the first half describes with intense imagery the significant events leading to the woman’s death. Heaney then uses enjambment as a technique to establish a bridge allowing the poem to flow naturally to the second part. The second part of the poem seems to have switch perspectives allowing us to see through the women’s eyes. The naked exposure of the girl in the first stanza shows the girl’s weakness which symbolizes the loss of innocence which connects with her death. Heaney uses the female body as a metaphor in the poem to describe the cultural conflict between Ireland and England symbolically at a personal level for Heaney to show the vulnerability the Irish have.

Heaney uses “Punishment” to draw a comparison with women from the Catholic community who were associated with British soldiers and were extremely punished for it. I think Heaney wants to show that they are powerless to stop the abuse and conflict that spreads throughout Irish Culture.