Storm on the Island: prepared for everything, frightened of nothing

If your house is built low, with thick stone walls, and nothing near it can blow down, what is left to be afraid of in a storm? On Shetland, old croft houses were built exactly like that, low and thick-walled, to stand up to Atlantic storms. Preparation like that should take the fear away. Seamus Heaney's island has done all of it. Squat houses, rock instead of soil, no trees to lose. It is still afraid, and it cannot say of what. What the islanders fear has no name until the very last line.

Storm on the Island is still in copyright, so this video quotes short pieces of it. Have the anthology open beside you if you can. The speaker is a we, the whole island talking, and the voice is chatty, like a neighbour explaining things at the door. It even talks to you directly, as if you were standing there. It starts with total confidence: "We are prepared: we build our houses squat". Squat means low and solid, close to the ground. Then the speaker lists everything the island has done. The houses are sunk in rock, there are no haystacks to lose, and "there are no trees, no natural shelter". No trees, no natural shelter: is that good news for the island, bad news, or both? Both. No trees means nothing to crash down, but it also means nothing on their side. The island is defined by what it lacks. Even the sea turns on them. You might think it is company, the speaker says, but no: the spray hits the windows, and the sea "spits like a tame cat Turned savage". A tame cat is a pet you trust. The simile turns inside itself: the thing that was friendly a moment ago is suddenly attacking.

Now the words Heaney chooses for the wind, and they come from a battlefield. The wind dives and strafes, which is what fighter planes do when they fire on the ground. Space is a salvo, many guns fired at once. And the island says: "We are bombarded by the empty air". A comparison carried on across several lines like that is called an extended metaphor. Here it turns a storm into an air raid. Now try the same ear on words the poem never uses. Which of these could not belong in Heaney's air raid: ambush, drizzle, or shellfire? Drizzle. Ambush and shellfire come from warfare, and drizzle is only weather. Heaney's words for the wind's attack, strafes, salvo and bombarded, all come from the battlefield. The poem is written in blank verse: lines of ten syllables that do not rhyme, close to the rhythm of ordinary speech. That is why it sounds like talk, and why the fear creeps in conversationally. And the last line names the enemy at last: "it is a huge nothing that we fear". Why is a huge nothing more frightening than a storm you can see?

Because you cannot prepare against nothing. The island opened by saying We are prepared, and the ending takes that away: once the threat has no body, no amount of squat houses and rock was ever going to be the answer.

Heaney grew up in Northern Ireland, and some readers see the Troubles, the violent conflict there, in the war words. The poem was published in nineteen sixty-six, before the Troubles began, so that reading has to be argued from the words, not announced. One examiner's report, on answers that paired this poem with Exposure, notes that they were often less successful in trying to write about conflict in Northern Ireland. So the fix: one clause at most, and only if the question rewards it. The war vocabulary is in the poem, so build the conflict reading from strafes, salvo and bombarded.

Five short lines hold this poem, and each one does a separate job. We are prepared, the opening claim, is exactly what the last line takes away. No trees, no natural shelter defines the island by absences, so nothing here is on their side. Spits like a tame cat turned savage makes the sea domestic right up to the moment it is not. We are bombarded by the empty air puts war words on a wind, which is why this poem can answer a conflict question as well as a nature one. And it is a huge nothing that we fear: the threat has no body, and the poem ends by admitting the fear is the real event. In the cluster, Storm on the Island reaches three strands: the power of nature, the reality of conflict through its war words, and identity and belonging through the island's we.

Over to you for the last part: three lines, each missing its key word, and then one new one. The poem's first claim: we are what? Prepared. The island's first claim is the one the last line takes away. Now the island: no trees, no natural what? Shelter. No natural shelter means nothing to fall, and nothing on their side. Try the sea: it spits like a tame cat turned what? Savage. The tame cat becomes the attacker in the space of one line. One more, a new one: how would Heaney say "the wind was loud", with one war word? Something like: the wind strafed the roofs, or the wind shelled the walls. One war verb turns weather into an attack. Low houses, thick walls, nothing left to blow down, and still afraid, of a huge nothing.

List three war words in a poem with no war in it and you got it: one tap of the thumb, job done. Unsure, keep it saved, as the power of nature video returns to this island.

Next in the chapter: Remains: probably armed, possibly not. Hopefully that's next in your feed, but if not, search for ScholaFly E L four oh, eleven.

Every other video is on scholafly.com too, easy to search by video code or by keyword. Whatever you're revising, go there and have a look, or, watch the next video.