Poem Analysis: Mid-term Break Essay

Seamus Heaney himself is the narrator in the rime, Mid-term Break, a sad story from his childhood. It portrays the reactions of e actuallyone remainder to him and of himself to a death in the family. It does this done the poesys deuce-ace parts the waiting at school, the behaviour of everyone at home, and his solitary see of the clay. This poem is unsentimental but estimable of emotions.The first stanza introduces Seamus sitting only at school, in the sick bay. He is waiting, and time passes late 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 argon calm taking place. The son is eventually picked up by his neighbours, which delivers the reader that his parents are too crabbed to pick up their son, so it must(prenominal) be an important occasion. The undermentioned stanza starts with Seamus arriving home, and in the porch meeting his stick, who is crying. This stanza tells us tha t we are witnessing a funeral. The reader still does not cut who has died, but we know that it is a family member, perhaps a sibling or even the boys beget. In the third gear stanza, the baby cooed and laughed this shows the babys innocence and lack of awareness of what is happening.At this point the only emotion that the narrator expresses is embarrassment by the itinerary 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 conscious of the way he is being find and talked about this reinforces the idea of the boy having to grow up for this event. The last arguing in the stanza introduces the boys mother so another family member is eliminated from the mystery of who has died. The next stanza begins with his mother expressing her emotion angry tearless sighs, a contrast to both the boys stated emotion and his fathers reaction. In this stanza, the ambulance arrives, and the corpse is taken into the hous e.The sixth and seventh stanzas depict the next morning and the boy visiting the room where the body is l embolden. Everything he observes is understated, and we find out that the funeral was that of someone who had been hit by a railway car and killed. In the last stanza we learn that it was a young child who has died, and condescend to realise that it was in fact Heaneys brother. This stigmas the stanza brutal, hard, shocking and unforgettable, as a child has lost his life before it has truly begun. The words are nearly all emphasised, so the reader must take in the lines message and the shock and occult grief that the family must find felt. The shock for the reader is that as we find out who died, we overly find out that the boy was a mere four old age old.There are eight stanzas in the poem. The first seven inhabit of three lines, and the last comprises only one. The rhyming in the poem is not strict for example close and home both have the o sound but are not total rhymes , and crying and stones throw both have the i sound. This very loose rhyming precis is present throughout most of the poem and creates the impression of story telling. The elision to this is the last two lines, which form a rhyming couplet to make an impact no gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him class. /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 peculiar(prenominal) 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 washstandnot cry. Heaney does not state hi s own emotions, but it is clear that he is hurting and however much he hides it, the reader deal sense it through the poems tone.The language in the poem is vernacular or every-day, simple, sparse and clear. This closely un-poetic language reduces the poem to its unornamented essentials and this makes the impact of the awful event stronger and more effective. Just 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 horror of what has happened. When the body first arrives, Heaney distances himself from it by calling it a corpse he is reluctant to look at that it is a person. However, as soon as he sees the body, he admits to himself that his sibling is dead, and uses individual(prenominal) pronouns such as him, his and he. The title of the poem can have lots of significations.At firs t the reader might think 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 unexpected death. Another meaning can be that the family has been broken in the middle of every-day life. The reader himself can decide 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 gentle 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 of wh ich is in the second line bells knelling are associated with death and to a close as well as suggests the finality of death. One of the more striking images is the image of the snowdrops and candles. Snowdrops are exsanguinous and pure, which suggests innocence. Snowdrops grow up through frost and they represent a figure of new life after death. The candles have a symbol of remembrance, and contribute a hint of religious significance. There is one main metaphor in the poem the dead child is wearing a poppy infract. 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 camp bed 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 trag ic death of a child. The 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 square 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.