Whatever You Say, Say Nothing

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1975

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Trojan Horse

At the end of section III of the poem, Heaney writes, “half of us, as in a wooden horse / Were cabin’d and confined like wily Greeks, / Besieged within the siege, whispering morse” (Lines 74-76). One of the more obvious symbols Heaney employs in “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” comes with the reference to the Trojan horse from classical Greek literature. The Trojan horse has become a familiar concept to modern audiences of duplicity or trickery—a reward willingly accepted, only to spell doom for the one who accepts it. In context, during the Trojan war (depicted in Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid) the Trojans and Greeks battle each other, and at the end of the conflict, the Greeks seemingly give up and sail home, leaving behind a large wooden horse as a gift of friendship and monument of their loss to the Trojan people. The Trojans, thinking the horse is a sign of surrender and believing the Greeks have given up the siege to return home, bring the wooden horse into their city. The wooden horse, designed by the wily Odysseus, is actually a trap. Within the horse are Greek soldiers who attack unexpectantly after being let into the city, sacking Troy, the Trojans’ capital city.

Heaney refers to the Trojan horse as a symbol for the role Irish Catholics are forced to play in Northern Ireland. They sit within the Trojan horse as their home is sieged—they are the minority hidden within the larger majority Anglo-Protestant state, or in the terms of the symbol, the Catholics are the Greeks inside the horse, and the Trojans are the (largely Protestant) Unionists who wish to stay under British control as the majority party in Northern Ireland. Heaney describes the Irish Catholics as “cabin’d and confined” (Line 75) within the horse, which is a representation of the silence they are forced to maintain in order to live safely in Northern Ireland. They speak in code—“whispering morse” and are “besieged within the siege” (Line 76).

Names as Symbols

In “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing,” words play the role of the ultimate power in war, and a person’s name is especially powerful for what it says about them within the socio-political system of Northern Ireland. In section III of the poem, Heaney writes, “Norman, Ken and Sidney signalled Prod / And Seamus (call me Sean) was sure-fire Pape” (Lines 69-70). This section of the poem draws attention to the power of names as indicators of status or affiliation. Heaney uses dialect cues—such as the word “Prod” for Protestant and “Pape” for Catholic—to indicate clear faction distinctions, and he indicates how a person’s given name is used against them socially and politically in such a divided state. There are multiple layers to the power of names as they are used here; first, is the power of identifying terms like “Prod” and “Pape,” which are shortened and given negative connotations depending on who wields them; then, there is the secondary reference to names as only stereotyped labels used to mark people as being on one side or another of the conflict.

Violence, Military Terminology, and Treachery

Like many of Heaney’s other poems, “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” uses violence, in terminology and imagery, to make a statement about its costs and effects on people. In this poem specifically, Heaney uses military terminology to describe the landscape of Northern Ireland as a place that is besieged by a “campaign of gas / And protest to gelignite and sten” (Lines 11-12). In this instance, it is important to note that “gelignite” refers to explosives and “sten” to submachine guns. More references pepper the poem: “Men die at hand. In blasted street and home,” (Line 25) “On all sides ‘little platoons’ are mustering—” (Line 45). Other instances of violence are also compacted within the poem—the reference to the Trojan horse and the treachery of the Greeks, the fishing pole and bait mentioned in Part II and, most notably, at the end of the poem when Heaney describes watching Stalag 17, a film about treachery in a POW camp during WWII, equating it to the “machine-gun posts” that define “a real stockade” (Line 81).