An existentialist overview of Seamus Heaney’s “Blackberry-Picking”

         The poem is divided into two parts, the first longer, describing the gathering of the blackberries, and their consumption, and the second about half that length, the ruin of the remainder. Though the poem actually explores the dissatisfaction often involved in gaining an object of desire but it can be seen from different perspectives, e.g. innocence to experience, hope to despair, etc.

If the poem is analyzed from the existentialist point view, the existential crisis is only found in the second stanza when the narrator utters

“I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair 
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.”

There are some parameters of existential crisis. They are mainly the sense of being alone and isolated in the world; a new-found grasp or appreciation of one's mortality; believing that one's life has no purpose or external meaning; searching for the meaning of life; shattering of one's sense of reality, or how the world is; an extremely pleasurable or hurtful experience that leaves one seeking meaning, etc. If we take the last two lines as the key to existential crisis, we could probably connect the purpose of the first stanza which is very sensuous and hopeful in tone. The first stanza shows the fresh and much awaited start of life in the form of Blackberry-picking. Every human being starts a fresh life as the herd of boys is shown here in Blackberry-Picking. The youth, unconscious of any consequence, ……..ate that first one and its flesh was sweet. The desire then grows stronger. This desire can be paralleled as the desire of life. Full in desire, the boys then comes with out with milk cans, pea tins jam pots where briars scratched and wet grass bleached their boots. This merry event soon turns into despair when the Blackberry is picked up in large amount and starts to rot. Then the young narrator fells like crying. The new found meaning sinks the narrator into despair as he knows that this event will continue every august. Here actually the Sisyphus myth can be taken into account to show the relation between the narrators knowing of the recurring event of blackberry picking and the toil of Sisyphus’ pushing the stone to the peak of the mountain where he knows every time that the stone will fall down the very moment it reaches the peak. This is the existential crisis of the poem from the narrator’s point of view. The narrator understands that though the merry event of Blackberry picking will turn into ruin, still every year the same event will occur. There is no alternative of it as Sisyphus has no alternative of pushing the stone. The boys could stop picking the Blackberry when they had enough, and so could Sisyphus stop pushing the stone. But both the cases are the course of life. Sisyphus accepts it very boldly knowing that individual is responsible for everything and the narrator accepts it with a cry knowing that it would continue. 

With the events of Blackberry-Picking the fact of despair and lose of hope is connected. The first stanza actually figures what happens in life and the second stanza shows the existentialist consequence. It does not matter whether the fact is known to the party or not but the result will be the same like

“….when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.”