Comparative Themes
Six key themes for comparing Heaney's Field Work with Sheers' Skirrid Hill. AO4 (comparison) is 10 marks — integrate comparison throughout every essay paragraph.
Comparative Paragraph Structure (PEEL + Comparison)
Point
Comparative claim about both
Evidence
Quotation from Heaney
Explain
Analyse technique/effect
Evidence
Quotation from Sheers
Explain
Analyse technique/effect
Compare
Explicit comparison
Key Comparative Themes
Similarities
- Both explore violence’s effects (not just the act)
- Both give voice to victims/witnesses
- Both question how poetry responds to violence (ethics of aestheticisation)
Heaney
Political/sectarian violence (Troubles); personal elegies; guilt about distance/complicity
Sheers
Gendered violence (domestic abuse), historical violence (WWI); witness as outsider; archaeological recovery
Example Comparative Paragraph
While Heaney’s ‘Casualty’ elegises a specific individual killed by Troubles violence, exploring the poet’s personal guilt (‘How culpable was he / That last night when he broke / Our tribe’s complicity?’), Sheers’ ‘Mametz Wood’ commemorates collective, anonymous dead (‘the wasted young…their skeletons paused mid dance-macabre’). Heaney writes from within the conflict; Sheers from historical distance. Yet both poets face the ethical challenge of making ‘beautiful’ art from suffering.