Punishment

In "Punishment" by Seamus Heaney, Heaney uses imagery to give us a brutal image of a young girl who had been tortured and killed. In the poem the speaker gives us a image of a young girl who has been murdered for adultery. The speaker shows some compassion for the young girl through the diction used in the second half of the poem.

We get the idea that the young girl has been serverely punished due to the words Heaney uses through out the poem. For example he uses words like tug, shakes. drowned, noose, and undernourished to name a few. These words show the brutality of how the woman was tortured and killed. He goes on to mention many body parts such as neck, nipples, ribs, head, face, brains, muscles, and bones. This gives us an idea that the body of the girl is extremely mutilated. This girl has been tortured to a drastically gory extent.

The speaker goes on in this poem in the second half and shows pity and compassion for this girl. He mentions love twice in this poem he also says "little adulteress". Uses it in such a way that he doesn't seem to be blaming her for adultery but, encouraging the love that she had. He also refers to her as "my poor scapegoat". I think he is saying that what had happened to her was not necessary and that she was just blamed for what she did. At the end of the poem he uses "intimate revenge", which is a more compassionate way of saying she was tortured.

So in all I think Heaney paints a very vivid picture of what had happened to this poor girl. Yet there is a lot of compassion shown with much reflection.