Night Drive
What year was the Night Drive written?
1969
What is "Field of Vision" about?
In the poem, the speaker is talking about a woman who is confined to a wheelchair and spends majority of her day looking out the window watching the outside.
What is the structure of the poem and does it follow any form of rhyme structure?
The poem is written in a stanza structure, and it follows freeform. In other words, there is no specific rhyme scheme.
Where is the speaker currently and where is he traveling to?
He is currently driving through France in order to reach Italy.
What are some rhetorical devices used in the poem and provide evidence of this.
"Her brow was clear as the chrome bits of the chair."
Repetition/Anaphora:
In stanza 2 he repeats "the same". This could be used to show how everyday the woman looks out the window constantly, yet nothing is changing, it is all the same.
Who is the man pulling the weeds that the speaker called, and what was his occupation?
The character is Seamus Heaney's father, who was a farmer and continued to work on his farm after Seamus Heaney had left to live his own life.
Why is the speaker driving through cities at night?
He's driving in the night for love, in order to meet with his lover in another country.
Who was this poem truly about and why did he write it?
What are some rhetorical devices that Seamus Heaney uses in "A Call"? Provide evidence to support this.
- Anything else with valid explanation.
Choose any rhetorical device that is used in this poem and provide evidence of this and explain the intention or meaning of including said device.
Open to interpretation, just provide evidence and supporting explanation
Describe the author's tone and explain how this style of writing shifted in the middle of the poem.
In the beginning of the poem Haney writes in a negative and saddening tone as he describes the sad life of the woman.
Later in the poem, the tone shifts as he explains how beautiful she viewed everything, even with her miserable life.
How does the tone shift within the poem "A Call?"
According to the presentation, who is the intended audience of this poem and what is Seamus Haney attempting to convey to this reader?
Give one piece of evidence to support this.
- If audience is wife, the message may be an expression of his love for her and how much he would do for her
- If the audience is a general reader, his intended message may be to express the importance of love and how worth it it is to continue to seek it.
Evidence:
Open to interpretation however some examples:
He explicitly uses "you" in the final stanza that can be interpreted as him specifically speaking to his wife.
He says that he's traveling "a thousand miles south where Italy" , this can be interpreted as him explaining what he would do for love and others should seek out for love as well.
What is the main idea that Seamus Heaney attempted to convey through this poem? How does the poem show the varying differences of perspectives?
The main idea that Seamus Heaney is attempting to convey how there are limitless perspectives to everything.
He does this through the shift in tone, as in the beginning of the poem he talks through a negative perspective of the life of the woman, but later in the poem he talks about how she viewed everything outside of the window as something beautiful.
What is the poem "A Call" about and what was Seamus Heaney attempting to convey through writing this?
This poem is about Heaney calling his father, who's back on their family farm, in order to speak with him. When he's waiting for his father to come to the phone, he thinks about how he is getting old and soon to die, making him think of expressing his love to him over the phone.
Message: Up to interpretation
Example may be that the message is to express the importance of life/family and spending time with your loved ones because death is timeless and ever approaching.