Strange Fruit: Plot

“Strange Fruit”: Overview

“Strange Fruit” is a haunting piece by Seamus Heaney that contains potent, emotive imagery and deep reflections on violence and injustice.
The title and subject matter link to Abel Meeropol’s 1937 poem of the same name, taken up by Billie Holliday as an iconic protest song, condemning lynching in America. Yet Heaney draws a historical and geographical shift to a new, equally contemplative context.

The poem tells the story of a bog body, akin to “The Tollund Man”. This body, however, is that of a girl who was tortured and left in the bog.
The focus is on the brutal treatment of the girl and her posthumous endurance encapsulated in the word ‘fruit’ which invokes the body as a seed or kernel of growth despite the violence done to it.

Heaney presents the girl’s body and her story from an almost forensic point of view. He describes her physical state in detail but leaves the reasons for her death to our imagination.
Racial injustice theme comes to the surface as one recognises the linkage to the American context of the named ‘Strange Fruit’ being black citizens lynched and showcased on Southern trees.
Yet Heaney’s poem has an Irish context — the girl’s likely punishment for adultery, her violence echoing the violence of British colonisation and civil conflict insisting that physical violence and its brutal showcases are not limited to one context alone.

Heaney uses graphic, realistic depictions of the girl’s death and preservation to emphasise the horror and senselessness of the violence committed against her.
“Strange Fruit” displays Heaney’s powerful ability to humanise historical victims, to depict violence truthfully and to make poignant societal commentary.
His use of nature imagery, and metaphoric language serve to reflect the way that the natural world has both concealed and revealed the evidence of past atrocities.
The title’s potent symbolism can be read as a commentary on how out of place, unusual (“strange”) and inappropriate such acts of violence are.

“Strange Fruit” is a deeply impactful poem that exhibits Heaney’s condemnation of historical atrocities and his capacity to vividly bring such events into our modern awareness. His use of the bog body allows him to tread where historical accounts cannot, providing voice to the voiceless and unseen.