THE WITNESS OF ATROCITY IN HEANEY`S SELECTED POEMS

Abstract

The research investigates the power of Seamus Heaney`s poetry in  denouncing human atrocity. His poetry turns to be   a record of human trauma. He lives the pain of  a quarter-century  Secterian and political violence in Northern Ireland, his native ground. He does not only  make  the   wounds of his people  speak, but also  he selects to be a listener to  the wounds. He is qualified to have the responsibility of re-opening the buried pain because of being  a sufferer and  a witness of this atrocity. Heaney gives voice to the  silent victims and grants them an opportunity to reshape their trauma  to the world in his poetry, thus every poem carries  different  story of suffering. This is part of  Heaney`s commitment as a poet to response to other trauma to present healing for human injuries and experience for preventing such trauma from occurring again. These traumatic experiences in his poems are gathered from different lands and century to prove the human pain is one and poetry which  is an accurate  reflection of life  should mould  the pain, fear, betray, violence  and shock which are the triggers of man trauma. The research  investigates this under the illumination of the theory of trauma.