Haney’s
“Punishment” describes a women drowned for adultery. It explores the primitive
nature of the Iron Age’s justice system and compares them to the conflicts in
modern Northern Ireland (Puchner 1645-1646). The poem uses allusion to discuss
her unfair fate and how it reverberates even today through the barbaric means
of punishment and persecution.
Haney places himself within the poem
right in the beginning. Although the mood created is “melancholy” and “meditative”
we are able to view the atrocities Haney envisions almost as if they were a
distant memory being recollected (Puchner 1646). Haney writes that he “feel[s]
the tug” and “can see her drowned / body in the bog” (1, 9-10). He immediately
identifies with the drowned woman as a victim and not as a perpetrator. In line
28 he calls her his “poor scapegoat.”
The poem discusses how even those
who would have been the woman’s friend, sister, or family have turned against
her for the act of punishment and out of “tribal, intimate revenge” (Haney 44).
Haney also describes himself as a mere spectator in her punishment as he has “stood
dumb” in the wake of her punishment.
Each of these actions (or inactions)
describes the atrocities that can and have occurred in fascist governments or
when terror based organizations are given power to promote their propaganda. The
woman’s unconventional relationship is rejected and punished just as Northern
Ireland sought to do against Catholics for simply practicing a different brand
of Christianity. While this is silently condemned by the reticent narrator, his
understanding of the perpetrators’ actions is made clear in the final lines
that he “understand[s] the exact / and tribal, intimate revenge” (43-44).-And
operating as voyeur and by not stepping in he has made himself as complicit as
the aforementioned perpetrators.
Works Cited
Haney, Seamus. “Punishment.”
1650 To the Present. Ed. Martin
Puchner. Shorter 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 2013.1647-1649. Print.
Vol. 1 of The Norton Anthology of World
Literature. 2 vols.
Puchner, Martin.
“Seamus Haney.” 1650 To the Present.
Ed. Puchner. Shorter 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 2013. 1645-1646.
Print. Vol. 2 of The Norton Anthology of
World Literature. 2 vols.
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