Punishment

The most prominent theme in “Punishment” comes near the end of the poem, when the speaker identifies himself as “the artful voyeur” (Line 32) who observes with almost sexual fascination the bog body’s “brains exposed / and darkened combs” (Lines 33-34) and her “muscles’ webbing / and all [her] numbered bones” (Lines 35-36). While the poem could focus more wholly upon the bog body as a person, the tarred and feathered women of Northern Ireland, or the violence of the troubles, Heaney instead chooses to focus on the observant, artistic “I.” The first-person pronoun is conspicuous throughout the poem, and there is a clear voice commenting upon the bog body from the outset of the poem. However, halfway through “Punishment,” the focus shifts from a description of the body to a description of the first-person speaker. The speaker says to the body, “I almost love you / but would have cast, I know, / the stones of silence” (Lines 29-31).

The speaker openly describes himself as someone whose neutrality would have sentenced the woman in the bog to death, had the two of them lived contemporaneously. This admittance establishes Heaney’s chief criticism of himself and all other artists who create through the exploitation of others’ suffering.