The speaker is a character who draws from some of Seamus Heaney’s own experiences, although defining details such as age, gender, and location are left unspecified. For this reason, the speaker can stand in for a range of people coming of age through their relationship to their natural environment. The poem covers two distinct times in the speaker’s life: the first in which they are a young child, anywhere between approximately five and 12 years old; the second in which they are a bit older, likely a preteen. In the first section, the speaker is fascinated by the world around them, including (and especially) the gross parts. This shows an innocent curiosity inherent in young children. In the second, the speaker develops a resistance to what they had previously enjoyed, which suggests a newly developed relationship with the world and with their own body.