scaffolding

‘What do you find significant in Heaney’s use of the extended metaphor of building?’
Scaffolding is a poem from the genre of relationships, and involves the narrator being one person in a relationship who uses the poem to talk to the other person. The key way in which the theme of relationships is presented is with the use of an extended metaphor.
Heaney utilises an extended metaphor which relates the different stages of developing a relationship to the different aspects of actually creating a building. The first three stanzas describe the process of building and the use of scaffolding and the final two stanzas display the narrator saying how this metaphor can be used in the context of their relationship.
The extended metaphor is presented through the use of many individual metaphors throughout the poem. For example the first stanza ‘Masons...scaffolding’ can be used to represent how people are cautious when they begin a new relationship, they do not rush in, but instead take time to get to know the other person and gain each other’s trust. Another one of these metaphors is line six ‘Showing off walls of sure and solid stone’ which refers to the stage in a relationship where two people know one another very well and are comfortable in the relationship, it becomes strong and will not be broken down by petty arguments and issues. In stanzas five and six the speaker is saying to the other member of the relationship not to worry if they notice changes and it feels different, this is because they have reached a point where they no longer need to be careful not to get hurt, as the bond is solid and they can both feel safe.
Other devices are used in this poem to convey the relationship theme; an interesting one of these is rhyme. Heaney uses rhyming couplets at the end of every pair of lines. The fact that he has chosen to use ‘couplets’ could be because it is a couple in the relationship he is describing, and the two rhyming words could represent the two