The Turnip Snedder, in true Heaney fashion, is based on an agrarian structure on the surface.
Heaney’s fondness for the fusion of the earthy and ethereal is shaped delicately yet again in this piece of his work. Being the poem that serves to launch the rush of conflicting ideas that Heaney presents in District and Circle, the Turnip Snedder has its roots in the photograph that’s reproduced on its book jacket. The photograph found by the Irish painter Hughie O’ Donoghue, contains the image of a man in his Sunday best, standing beside an antique contraption of wood and metal used for the purpose of crushing turnips.And despite its unremarkable personality that’s the precise object that flagged Heaney’s train of thought and resulted into another epic masterpiece.
Heaney’s ability of cleverly mingling the old ghosts with the new visions and to play with satire and stark opposites is as much apparent in District and Circle as in any other of his books and The Turnip Snedder is a perfect kick start for such a piece of work.
The Snedder on its examination proves to be a cumbersome and barbaric looking thing, as much a weapon as a tool. In the times when efficient and shiny battery or solar-operated machinery was not yet introduced the Snedder was a helpful mate of the farmer and his men.
Despite all its ugly and hefty appearance it had the precision needed to do the job. And as a job connected to earth and harvest requires hard work, sweat and strength, it can be agreed that a tool of the standard of a Snedder, was much more appropriate for it rather than any kind of gadget that can be produced in modern day.
Therefore no matter how strong we may be the supporters of a modern era with its whirring and ticking technology the authenticity of the old and traditional is yet to be challenged. Keeping these thoughts in the background Heaney gives us the first lines of the poem.
In an age of bare hands
And cast iron, They contain an air of belonging to a time gone by. The word “age” expresses the long length of time, sixty years back to be exact, when Heaney was young and experiencing the throes of his homeland caught in World War II.A time when bare hands and iron were the only tools possessed by Man to do hard labor. To a modern reader it creates an imagery of an uncivilized era. When one had to be literally soaked in sweat and blood to create a livelihood. Consequently a gruesome period of human history. Apart from Heaney’s intention to reconstruct the time period the Snedder was native to, the lines also set the chronology of the poet himself. As in most of his poems (Follower, Mid Term Break, Death of a Naturalist) the reference to his own experiences and history is never neglected. He likes to create new things on old pedestals, new emotions influenced by past ones making his poetry relatable and an entity that grows, has shadows of what has been.It gives Heaney’s work a very strong influence over a reader because reading something that has the quality of not just describing a thing or event of the present but also has a history behind it to connect with has quite a long lasting impact.
A sample of Heaney’s skill of juggling with opposites can also be seen in the lines as “bare hands “ and “cast iron” are depicted as being on the same level .Although human flesh is the most tender of all things and normally has no comparison with the toughest of all metals BUT talking about both of these here as if they had no differences at all, as if human hands were a set of tools alongside the ones made by iron show the harshness of those times. When the world was infected by war and human life meant even less than an inanimate object.
In the next lines
The clamp-on meat-mincer,
The double flywheeled water-pump, the names of the mechanisms of the turnip snedder sprinkled throughout the couplet, with their forceful pronunciations such as “clamp-on” “meat mincer” double flywheeled”, create a vision of it as being heavy, large and rustic. The alliteration in the words “m”eat –“m”incer is giving it a menacing air that can be connected to a brutal piece of blade used for chopping away at anything that comes in the way.A consonance can also be detected in “clamp” and “pump” “mincer” and “water”. The last letters of these pairs being the same creates a connection between the sounds of the above and below lines without exactly rhyming with each other in identical places. The “d” sound in “double” and “fly wheeled” creates a stressful note that gives the couplet an abruptness that further enhances the severity of the atmosphere Heaney tends to convey.
Moving forward the poem describes the vigorous movements of the turnip snedder in the next lines
It dug its heels in among wooden tubs
And troughs of slops,
The force apparent in the phrase “dug its heels” serves to convey the tool’s callous ways, it trampling powerfully on the ground it stands upon. It’s the same as if a marching soldier would grind his heels on the ground, confident of his strength and ruthlessness. The sound play with the consonants “d” and “t” is continued here. The verse breaks up on the stresses created by the sounds of the words like “Dug its heels in among wooden tubs” “and troughs of slops” so a tense voice is formed.
On the surface the lines are just depicting an innocent enough scene of a farmyard which should sound quaint but because of the structure of the verse and the placement of words in it that’s mentioned above, the environment sounds foreboding as if something is lurking just beneath the surface and the farm and its implements are much more than they seem to be. The “tubs” and “troughs” and the snedder seem to make up a much bigger picture than of a mere farmyard. And so the reader can connect it to the post war era when danger, distrust and hate was at large. Spies were common enough on both sides and the most ordinary of people or places could pose as a threat. Life was sparse and everybody was terrified for the future.
In the next verses, the snedder is said to be “Hotter than body heat” “In summertime” and “cold in winter” “as winter’s body armor”. Built up of iron and wood it has the capacity to resist against the weather and its hardships. A well trained soldier also has the same strength of nerves or we can say the will of “iron” to endure any kind of adversity that he faces in the times of battle. Whether the harsh conditions are caused by Nature, if the lines be taken in their literal meaning, or inflicted by fellow men, a soldier carries on his mission without yielding to the pressures of the environment.
It can be observed that this relation of the machine with the soldier gives the latter a sense of not being a human. Instead of a flesh and blood person with all the weaknesses that comes with being a human, he sounds more like an automaton. He is a well oiled machine, bent on achieving what he has been programmed to do. He would be capable of any merciless act because there is no conscience in a machine. And thus he is an unnatural being, a Frankenstein monster bred solely for the horrors of war.
More symbols of warfare are given in the poem by “a barrel-chested breast plate” “standing guard on four braced greaves” creating a vivid picture of the snedder looking more like a part of artillery than a mere farm machine. “Standing guard” with his legs “braced” apart in an alert position, is a common enough stance for a soldier in a situation when enemies are never far.
Heaney never releases the forceful tone of the poem anywhere and the stressful intonation is present here in “barrel chested breast plate” and “four braced greaves”.
Heaney‘s love of bringing together parallel universes, creates a link between the very solid realities of war and the numinous concept of divinity as the poem draws to a close. “This the way that God sees life” he writes “from seedling briard to snedder”
Heaney is referring that to God, all the chaos of battles big and small and life itself is something to be viewed from a distance. He looks upon everyone “from seedling briard to snedder” from the smallest atom of the universe to the most obvious of things and they are all the same to him. The innocent victim and the sinful offender are both creations of his and they have the ability to choose their own actions and to think about the consequences that are going to follow them. So after giving humans that ability He observes them, never interfering, just looking on at how we use it and the results that follow are based upon the decisions we make. Whether to wage wars and bring death and desolation or to make the world a better place for our future generations, its all up to what choices we make. To God it never makes a difference because He is unaffected by any of it.
“As the handle turned” or as Time flies on and life goes endlessly day by day the “turnip heads were let fall and fed”. There is never birth without death. As grim as the concept of death is it’s a part of Nature.The vigor of the living could never be identified if there wasn’t the silence of death. But sometimes the way of death a living being has to go through is not natural and that’s what makes it an abomination. Like deaths in wars because they are just a representation of the unleashing of hatred and prejudices and the uncontrolled use of power. Hence human lives have as much significance as “turnips” and the disregard by which they are destroyed is shown by Heaney in the dispassion of the words “let fall and fed”. “The juiced up inner blades” are the metaphorical “jaws” of Death. Heaney is attempting to give a pure graphic image of the reaper of all souls here. The words “inner blades” create a metallic feeling which gives a sense of coldness that’s associated with death.
The vast thematic web of the whole poem is tied up in the line “this is the turnip cycle”. It is a statement with a ring of finality to it. As if Heaney if saying “This is what it all adds up to“. All the contradictory ideas he gave the reader in the poem, new and old, life and death, the tension of war under the façade of the peace of a farmyard, the contempt of the divine and the ignorance of humans, its all summed up in The Turnip Snedder. It is all part of a “cycle” an eternally moving circle of life. The turnips are humanity, existing in huge numbers in an open field, yet our own petty squabbles and narrow-mindedness culminate into disastrous events like wars and we end up being crushed helplessly under the pressure of all our hatred.
The last lines are a burst of imagery. Heaney takes the reader back to the same theme that served as an undercurrent for the whole poem. War. The tone is purely visceral and bitter “As it dropped its raw sliced mess” the intonation is hard and laced with irony.Heaney intends to create a picture of the blood and gore in a battle field by visceral sounding words like “raw sliced mess” and “glistering”. The sibilant pronunciations of “sliced mess” and “glistering” harmonize together to make an image of something connected with flesh and being bloody and an unpleasant sight thats far from the simple process of turnips being crushed. Its a battlefield that Heaney paints in front of his reader in the last lines. He leaves us with a reminder of what is left behind after the passing of the great evils of war.A field full of blood spattered dead bodies is all we can hope to collect in its wake.