Where did you think babies came from when you were a young child? Many of us had imaginative answers to this question, guessing that babies came from our belly buttons or a delivery stork. When Nobel Prize-winning Northern Irish poet Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) was little, he thought that doctors pulled babies out of their bags.
In 'Out of the Bag' (2001), Seamus Heaney explores life, death, medicine, and illness from the perspectives of a curious and innocent child and a wiser but ever-learning adult.
'Out of the Bag' by Seamus Heaney
Here's a quick overview of the poem's key aspects before we explore it in more detail.
| Title | 'Out of the Bag' |
| Author | Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) |
| Published | 2001 in the poetry collection Electric Light |
| Structure | Four sections containing 94 lines organised into tercets |
| Style | Free verse |
| Key themes | Birth; death; illness; healing; the interconnectedness of past and present |
| Poetic devices | Assonance; imagery; repetition; allusion; enjambement |
'Out of the Bag' by Seamus Heaney: structure
'Out of the Bag' by Seamus Heaney contains 94 lines, mostly organised into tercets (three-line stanzas). The final line of the first section is the only exception as it stands alone.
The poem is divided into four sections. The first section is the longest section, with 13 stanzas. The second section has ten stanzas. The third section is the shortest, with four stanzas. The fourth and final stanza has five sections. Each section describes one or multiple events experienced by the poem's speaker at different points in their life.
The poem is written in a free verse style with no set meter or rhyme scheme. However, the poem does use the repetition of sounds, such as through assonance and varied use of rhyme, in order to create rhythm at certain points in the poem.
Assonance: the repetition of vowel sounds in more than one word.
'Out of the Bag' by Seamus Heaney: summary
Section I is told from the perspective of a child. The speaker has seen the doctor repeatedly arrive with a bag, disappear into a room, reappear again with an empty bag, and leave again. Because of this, the speaker believes that all babies come from that bag. The doctor represents both familiarity and the unknown to the speaker. The speaker imagines how the doctor makes babies out of little baby parts he has hung up on the ceiling.
Section II is told from the perspective of an older speaker visiting a hospital. The speaker remembers a time when they were younger and nearly passed out from the incense fumes during a religious procession. He remembers another time when they nearly fainted as they were pulling grass at Lourdes, a Catholic shrine. As they were passing out, they had a hallucination of Doctor Kerlin finger painting images of people in a streamed-up window in the speaker's 'scullery' (utility room) from their childhood and bringing 'baby bits' together in the sink. Then, the speaker wakes up.
Section III returns to the speaker pulling grass and posting it to a cancer patient and a cancer survivor. The speaker wants to lie down in the grass alone and be visited by Hygeia, the Greek goddess of health.
Section IV describes the speaker's childhood once again. The speaker is standing over their mother, who has just given birth. The mother is exhausted. She asks the child, as she always does if they like the baby the doctor brought over while she was sleeping.
Did you know? Seamus Heaney was the eldest of nine children, so the poem could very well be about his own experiences with the birth of his many siblings.
Fig. 1 - 'Out of the Bag' begins with the image of a doctor's medical bag.
'Out of the Bag' by Seamus Heaney: analysis
'Out of the Bag' is a pretty long poem with a lot of complicated images. Let's break it down and analyse each section step by step.
Section I
This section transports the reader into the speaker's childhood through the use of internal rhyme, assonance, and assorted imagery.
Internal rhyme: when there are rhyming words in the middle of a single line of poetry or in the middle of multiple lines of poetry.
'Those nosy, rosy, big soft hands of his'.
In this line from the second stanza, 'nosy' and 'rosy' rhyme, creating a nursery-rhyme effect. In addition to the speaker's description of the doctor's hands as 'soft', this adds to the idea that the doctor is a positive figure for the child.
Assonance is also used to reflect the feelings of the child as they experience this mysterious life event.
'Were empty for all to see, the trap-sprung mouth
Unsnibbed and gaping wide. Then like a hypnotist
Unwinding us, he'd wind the instruments
Back into their lining, tie the cloth
Like an apron round itself,
Darken the door and leave'
The multiple instances of assonance in the third and fourth stanzas have been underlined above. The repetition of the long 'i' sound reflects the child's curiosity about the open doctor's bag and the hypnotic way the doctor cleans his instruments and places them inside.
The doctor not only represents familiarity to the child, but he also represents the unknown. This contrast is reflected through the use of imagery.
Imagery: descriptive language that appeals to the senses
'Two peepholes to the locked room I saw into
Every time his name was mentioned, skimmed
Milk and ice, swabbed porcelain, the white'
On the one hand, the child associates the doctor with familiar images such as 'skimmed / Milk and ice'. On the one hand, the doctor represents a bridge between the child and the unknown. The child doesn't yet know or understand the workings of birth, life, or death, and the doctor provides 'two peepholes' into this 'locked room' of information.
The imagery also helps the reader to experience the scene from a child's perspective. The child is in awe of the mysterious doctor whose eyes are 'Hyperborean', a reference to mythical people from the extreme north in Greek Mythology. The child's imaginative strength is further emphasised as the speaker compares the bag lining to 'the colour of a spaniel's inside lug' (ear).
Section II
In this section, the speaker muses on health and places of healing while also highlighting the connection between the past and the present.
The speaker includes many references to explore how humans have healed themselves throughout history, in places of healing in ancient Greece as well as Lourdes, a Catholic shrine where unwell pilgrims travel to be healed.
The poem uses repetition to connect the past and present in stanza 19.
'In Lourdes in '56
When I nearly fainted from the heat and fumes,
Again I nearly fainted as I bent
To pull a bunch of grass and hallucinated'
The repetition of 'I nearly fainted' connects two past events in which the speaker fainted. One of these times, the speaker hallucinates about Doctor Kerlin, linking the speaker's present to their childhood belief that Doctor Kerlin created babies with his 'soapy big hygienic hands'.
Through these interconnected, time-spanning references, the speaker explores how healing has always been both 'technical and ritual'. As a child, the speaker experienced the raw reality of blood and the doctor's tools, and they used the grand narrative of the doctor as a baby-creating magician in order to make sense of it. As an adult, the speaker does the same, but with religion and spiritual places of healing as well as 'the cure / By poetry',
Fig. 2 - In 'Out of the Bag' the speaker describes fainting from the smell of incense during a religious procession.
Section III
This section contains further references to ancient Greece and many allusions to the first and second sections of the poem. These references and allusions continue the theme of the interconnectedness of the past and the present, medicine and spirituality, and life and death.
Allusion: an indirect or subtle reference
'And to be visited in the very eye of the day
By Hygeia, his daughter, her name still clarifying
The haven of light she was, the undarkening door.'
In the final stanza of section III, the speaker references Hygeia, the Greek goddess of health. The speaker hopes to be visited by her, suggesting that the speaker is now older and in need of healing.
In the final line of the stanza, the speaker alludes to section I and how Doctor Kerlin would 'Darken the door and leave. Unlike the doctor, Hygeia is a 'haven of light' and 'undarkening door'. This contrast illustrates the mature speaker's better understanding of life, death, and illness from both a medical and spiritual point of view. Because of this increased knowledge, they feel calmer towards the people and places that provide healing.
Section IV
This section returns to the place 'Out of the Bag' started, giving the poem a cyclical structure, reflecting the theme of life and death that runs throughout the text. The continuous running of time, studded by birth, death, and illness, is further emphasised through enjambement and in the references to familiar celebrations of life and death.
Enjambement: when one line of poetry runs into the next
'...and she's asleep
In sheets put on for the doctor, wedding presents
That showed up again and again, bridal
And unusual and useful at births and deaths.'
This passage from the second stanza of section IV uses enjambement and references births, deaths, and wedding presents to highlight the muddle of life events we witness and partake in over the course of our lives.
Throughout the poem, the speaker demonstrates how we turn these experiences into poetry, stories, or rituals to make sense of these complex bodily events. This is exactly what the speaker's mother did for them as, after giving birth, she asked her child:
And what do you think
Of the new wee baby the doctor brought for us all
When I was asleep?
Out of the Bag - Key takeaways
- 'Out of the Bag' was written by Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) and published in his 2001 poetry collection titled Electric Light.
- In 'Out of the Bag', Seamus Heaney explores birth, illness, and healing from the perspectives of a curious and innocent child and a wiser but ever-learning adult.
- 'Out of the Bag' is a long, free verse poem divided into four sections.
- The key themes of the poem include birth, death, illness, healing, and the interconnectedness of past and present.
- 'Out of the Bag' contains many poetic devices such as assonance, imagery, repetition, allusion, and enjambement.
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