Plot & Narrative
In A Constable Calls, who visits the farm and why?
A police constable visits to record the crops grown on Heaney's father's farm for official taxation/record-keeping purposes.
In A Constable Calls, Heaney notices the constable's gun holster. What does this detail suggest to the young boy?
It suggests danger, threat, and the oppressive presence of authority. The boy is fearful, even though the constable is doing a routine job.
What is one major theme shared by all three poems?
Family relationships / memory / time passing (accept any of these with brief justification).
A Constable Calls is written in short stanzas. What effect does this create?
The short, clipped stanzas mirror the tense, careful observation of the boy — each stanza is like a held breath or a nervous glance.
Seamus Heaney is from which county?
County Derry
In The Underground, what are the two people doing at the start of the poem?
They are rushing through the London Underground, the speaker chasing his wife through the tunnels.
In The Underground, Heaney compares himself to a figure from Greek myth. Who is he compared to?
Orpheus, who descended into the Underworld to find his wife Eurydice.
A Constable Calls deals with a political theme. What is it?
The tension between the Catholic/nationalist community in Northern Ireland and the Protestant/unionist police force (the RUC), representing the wider political divide in the North.
The Underground is written as a single, flowing sentence for much of its length. What does this suggest?
It mirrors the speed and momentum of running through the tunnels — the rush of excitement and love at the start of a relationship.
A Constable Calls is from the collection North (1975). What was happening in Northern Ireland at this time?
The Troubles — a period of violent conflict between nationalist/republican and unionist/loyalist communities, involving the IRA and British
In A Call, what is Heaney's father doing when his mother goes to fetch him?
He is in the garden, weeding the leek rig — down on his hands and knees, carefully pulling out weeds by hand.
In A Constable Calls, what crop does the father not declare, and what does this suggest?
Turnips. This small act of omission suggests quiet resistance to authority and creates a tense moment of hidden defiance.
What theme does The Underground share with the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice?
Love, loss, and the fear of losing someone you love; also the idea of chasing something you might never fully hold onto.
A Call uses very plain, conversational language for much of the poem, but then shifts register. Where does this shift happen and what is its effect?
The shift happens when Heaney moves from the domestic scene (the mother fetching the father, the garden weeding) to "This is how Death would summon Everyman." The sudden philosophical and literary register — invoking medieval allegory — jolts the reader and elevates the poem from the personal to the universal.
The Underground is thought to be about Heaney's wife, Marie. How does knowing this change how you read the poem?
It becomes a personal love poem and a meditation on their relationship — the fear of losing her takes on real biographical weight, not just mythological symbolism.
In A Constable Calls, what does the young Heaney notice about the bicycle?
He notices the constable's black bicycle leaning outside — he fixates on details like the fat black handlegrips and the oiled black leather of the holster.
In The Underground, find an example of alliteration and explain its effect.
"Honeymooning, moonlighting" — the repeated sounds create a breathless, rushing, romantic energy that mirrors the hurried movement through the tunnels.
What theme is explored through the image of Heaney's father weeding the garden?
The theme of ordinary life and its quiet beauty — but also mortality. The father is carefully separating what should live from what should not, which mirrors the poem's broader concern with time, ageing, and death. There is tenderness in the image but also fragility.
In A Constable Calls, the poem is written from the perspective of a child. How does this affect the reader's experience?
It puts us in the position of the powerless observer — we see the constable through wide, fearful eyes, which makes the threat feel larger and more oppressive.
Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995. In his acceptance speech he spoke about poetry "making space for the life we actually live." How does A Call reflect this idea?
The poem takes the utterly ordinary event of a phone call home and finds deep emotional and philosophical meaning in it — exactly the kind of "space" Heaney described.
What happens at the very end of A Call and why is it significant?
His father comes to the phone and Heaney "nearly said I loved him" — but didn't. The word "nearly" carries enormous weight; it suggests how difficult it is to express love openly, and leaves the reader with a sense of something left unsaid, which feels all the more painful given the poem's meditation on mortality.
Heaney writes "if it were nowadays, / This is how Death would summon Everyman." What does this mean and what literary tradition does it draw on?
He imagines that the experience of waiting — the phone unanswered, time ticking — is like being called by Death. It references the medieval morality play Everyman, in which Death summons an ordinary man to account for his life. Heaney elevates an ordinary phone call into a universal meditation on mortality.
All three poems deal with a kind of fear or anxiety. Compare how fear operates differently in each poem.
In A Constable Calls, fear is political — the boy fears authority and the consequences of the undeclared crops. In The Underground, fear is emotional — the speaker fears losing his partner. In A Call, fear is existential — the fear of losing a parent, represented by the "grave ticking" of clocks and the reference to Death summoning Everyman. Fear moves from external/political to deeply internal and universal across the three poems.
How does Heaney use the ending of each poem to create a lasting impression? Compare two of the three poems.
Open answer — students should note that A Call ends with "I nearly said I loved him" — a devastating near-miss of emotional expression; A Constable Calls ends with the constable cycling away, relief mixed with residual dread. Both use restraint and what is not quite said or done to leave the emotional weight on the reader.
Heaney has said that poetry should "open new avenues to human knowledge." Choose one of the three poems and explain what new "avenue of knowledge" it opens for the reader.
Open answer — e.g. A Constable Calls opens knowledge about the experience of living under political surveillance; The Underground opens knowledge about how love contains fear of loss; A Call opens knowledge about grief, memory, and the way the mundane becomes sacred.