Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney. Essay -- English Literature

Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney.Mid-Term Break by the poet Seamus Heaney is about a personalexperience that he has encountered. It deals with the issues of lifeand death in a family and also how contrasting people cope.The agnomen at first suggests that the poem is going to be about aholiday, but as you get into the poem further, you realise that thetitle has a far deeper and darker meaning...In the first stanza, we learn that Seamus Heaney is in a college sickbay waiting to be picked up. You get suspicious when he is universepicked up his neighbour, which could indicate that something serioushas happened.Time is passing slowly, and Heaney uses alliteration to show this.Counting bells knelling classes to a close.Already so early in the poem, we sense that something is slander due tothe poets word choice of knelling. Knelling is when a church bellrings to signify a funeral. The clues become more apparent as you move by means of the stanzas, and are very effective in arousing yours uspicions.When Seamus Heaney arrives home, he is greeted by his father crying onthe porch. A stereotypical male would usually hold behind his feelingsand Heaney uses parenthesis to show this.In the porch i met my father crying---He had always taken funerals in his stride---And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.Obviously something had caused him majuscule pain, and parenthesis iseffective in showing that normally Heaneys father would bottle up hisfeelings, and be strong for everyone else, taking things in hisstride.Meanwhile in the following(a) verse.The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pramThis extract shows that the baby is oblivious to its surroundings andto what is happen... ...ld, and was killed in a road trafficaccident...A four find fault box, a foot for every year.The poet is emphasizing the fact that his brother was just an innocentchild, and did not deserve to die at such an early stage in his life.He places this line separate from the rest of the stanzas an d thisdraws your attention to it making you think about how precious lifeis, and just when you think that you have it all figured out,something happens that makes you headway the purpose of life again.We think that the natural order is for adults to die before childrenand that is why it is such a hard thing to come to terms with when achild dies in a family.A point i think that Heaney was trying to stress to the reader, isthat no matter what tragedies happen in life, in the hold on we just haveto move on and accept the past so we can move onto the future.