Blackberry-Picking : Summary
Blackberry-Picking is a notable literary work by Seamus Heaney. A complete discussion of this literary work is given, which will help you enhance your literary skills and prepare for the exam. Read the Main texts, Key info, Summary, Themes, Characters, Literary devices, Quotations, Notes, to various questions of Blackberry-Picking.
Summary
In the poem Blackberry Picking, the poet compares his childhood memories with the life cycle of ripe summer blackberries and human life. At the beginning of the poem, the poet wishes to pluck blackberries from the tree. Because once they ripen, the fungus eats them. Human life is like that. Blackberries turn from unripe to ripe fruit and eventually fall off.
In the same way, the beautiful life of people from childhood finally falls into old age and people die. The poet here compares this process of ripening blackberry to that of a child from childhood to maturity and he says that it is natural for blackberry and human life to grow up, enter youth, and lose their youth over time.
Man has no hand over it and no one can control it. According to him, whether one likes it or not, human life will decline through the evolution of time, just as blackberries turn sour when overripe.