Poem Analysis: Mid-term Break Essay

Seamus Heaney himself is the narrator in the metrical composition, Mid-term Break, a sad story from his baby birdhood. It depicts the reactions of every(prenominal)one around him and of himself to a death in the family. It does this through the poems troika parts the waiting at school, the behavior of everyone at stead, and his solitary viewing of the body. This poem is unsentimental but full of emotions.The prime(prenominal) stanza introduces Seamus sitting but at school, in the sick bay. He is waiting, and time passes slowly as he counts bells knelling classes to a close. This tells the commentator that the mid-term break is non a school holiday, as classes be still winning place. The boy is eventually picked up by his neighbours, which shows the reader that his p atomic number 18nts are too busy to pick up their son, so it must be an important occasion. The succeeding(a) stanza scars with Seamus arriving home, and in the porch meeting his father, who is crying. This stanza tells us that we are witnessing a funeral. The reader still does not know who has died, but we know that it is a family member, perhaps a blood relation or even the boys mother. In the third stanza, the baby cooed and laughed this shows the babys pureness and lack of awareness of what is happening.At this point the only emotion that the narrator expresses is embarrassment by the dash older men are treating him like an adult. The fourth stanza describes the way the guests at the funeral react to the boy. He is intended of the way he is being observed and talked about this reinforces the idea of the boy having to grow up for this event. The finishing line in the stanza introduces the boys mother so another family member is eliminated from the mystery of who has died. The abutting stanza begins with his mother expressing her emotion angry tearless sighs, a contrast to both the boys give tongue to emotion and his fathers reaction. In this stanza, the ambulance arrives, an d the corpse is impressn into the house.The sixth and 7th stanzas depict the next morning and the boy visiting the room where the body is laid. Everything he observes is understated, and we find out that the funeral was that of someone who had been butt against by a car and killed. In the last stanza we learn that it was a young child who has died, and stick with to realise that it was in fact Heaneys brother. This makes the stanza brutal, hard, infracting and unforgettable, as a child has lost his career before it has truly begun. The words are nearly all emphasised, so the reader must take in the lines message and the shock and deep grief that the family must have felt. The shock for the reader is that as we find out who died, we also find out that the boy was a incorrupt four years old.There are eight stanzas in the poem. The first seven consist of three lines, and the last comprises only one. The rhyming in the poem is not strict for exercising close and home both have t he o sound but are not total rhymes, and crying and stair both have the i sound. This very loose rhyming scheme is present throughout more or less of the poem and creates the conception of story telling. The exception to this is the last two lines, which form a rhyming braces to make an impact no gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear. /A four foot box, a foot for every year.The poem contains eight sentences, which run through the lines and the stanzas, making the poem less like a poem and more like a story. The sentences are a mixture of lengths, which makes some of them very simple, for example Next morning I went up to the room. Others, in particular the sentence which starts with the third stanza and runs through into the fifth, are very descriptive and show that he is taking everything in at once.The mood in the poem is sombre and sad. The tone of the poem is one of sorrow, grief, hurt and distress. The father is crying, the mother is so distraught she cannot cry. Heaney does not state his own emotions, but it is clear that he is hurting and however much he hides it, the reader can sense it through the poems tone.The language in the poem is vernacular or every-day, simple, sparse and clear. This some un-poetic language reduces the poem to its bare essentials and this makes the impact of the awful event stronger and more effective. that as the body has no gaudy scars the poem has no flowery, overblown descriptions. Onomatopoeia, such as cooed and whispers are used to reinforce the quietness of the poem and of death. Others, such as coughed and knocked break the silence and show the revulsion of what has happened. When the body first arrives, Heaney distances himself from it by calling it a corpse he is reluctant to admit that it is a person. However, as soon as he sees the body, he admits to himself that his sibling is dead, and uses personal pronouns such as him, his and he. The deed of conveyance of the poem can have lots of meanings.At first the reader might depend of a holiday, the normal meaning of a mid-term break, but after reading the poem, we know that this was not the case. Instead, the title can be associated with the boy who has died mid-term, as in mid-life, in other words the untimely and unforeseen death. Another meaning can be that the family has been broken in the middle of every-day life. The reader himself can steady down which of these Heaney meant the title to be. The alliteration in the poem brings out sounds to aid the images. The hard c sounds at the start and the end, Counting bells knelling classes to a close and knocked him clear. The harsh sound is suggestive of his way of dealing with grief, permit his locked up emotions come out in his words. Those hard sounds contrast with the soft s sounds in the seventh stanza Snowdrops and candles soothed the bedside. These soft sounds show that Heaney is literally soothed by the candles and flowers.There are very strong images in the poem, the first o f which is in the second line bells knelling are associated with death and to a close also suggests the finality of death. one(a) of the more striking images is the image of the snowdrops and candles. Snowdrops are white and pure, which suggests innocence. Snowdrops grow up through frost and they instance a symbol of new life after death. The candles have a symbol of remembrance, and give a hint of religious significance. There is one main metaphor in the poem the dead child is wearing a poppy bruise. The idea that he is wearing the bruise gives the idea that it can almost be wiped off, or that it is not really part of the boy. This shows the reluctance of Heaney to admit that his younger brother is dead. This is echoed in the simile of He lay in the four foot box as in a cot he would rather that his little brother is sleeping, not dead.In twenty-two lines of simple language, almost prose Seamus Heaney has created a striking and shocking picture of the tragic death of a child. Th e poem is deceptive in its simplicity because it is full of imagery and has a deep impact. Without allowing himself any sentimentality, Heaney leaves us with a deep impression of the effect of the boys death on the whole family. The last line in the poem, A four foot box, a foot for every year, is one that is very famous. This is because it stays with the reader long after they have read the poem.