Comparison of We Are Seven by William Wordsworth and Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney
William Wordsworth was a defining member of the English Romantic
Movement. As we can see from reading his poem, his personality and
love of nature is conveyed. Wordsworth was probably inspired from his
upbringing and most of his mature life living in the Lake District
with picturesque landscapes influencing a true love of nature. Some
describe Wordsworth as a profoundly earnest and sincere thinker who
displays a high seriousness tempered with tenderness and a love of
simplicity.
Seamus Heaney had a rather conflicting upbringing as he also grew up
in the country- watching American soldiers in the local fields around
1944. Heaney has taken this image of himself as a consciousness
suspended between history and ignorance as representative of the
nature of his poetic life and development. Heaney has also worked as a
professor of Poetry at Oxford University and has also won the Nobel
Prize for literature.
The poem Mid-Term Break is about memories of death from a child's
point of view and the difficulty with other people's emotions. From my
research I have found out that the poem is based upon a real event in
Heaney's life and what he can remember from his own childhood. The
difficulties he faced included coping with his own mother's anger -
anger not with her son but with God for letting her child die. Heaney
can only be alone in order to mourn along with the 'snowdrops and
candles'. We can come to the conclusion that this may have been the
first experience of death of someone close to him.
Similarly, We are Seven is about a young girl who is convincing the
reader that her family consists of seven although a few of them are
dead. Death links these two poems together along with the sorrow and
mixed emotions of losing a loved one who was very close to you in each
case a brother and also sisters. It is a genuinely moving piece which
is a realisation of the reality of situations happening in the world
over by a car. The main part of the poem is set in the family home,
I) The author of this poem is Elizabet Bishop and the fragment belongs to Twelve o'clock news. Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet who lived before, during and after the Second World War. This terrible historical event influenced his writer. Not only that, she was also influenced by the poet Marianne Moore, who made experimental poetry. This poem was published in 1976 after the Vietnam War, a war that inspired the poem. Bishop is part of the new historicism, the authors of this movement believe that a work is the product of a time, place and circumstances and this must be taken into account when reading his works.
...his life. The battle was very intense and the poem gives a great description of the
In conclusion, this whole poem has symbolic historic value because of its theme surrounding The Children’s March and The Birmingham Church Bombing. The author successfully brought the pain and impact the event made by taking Addie Mae Collins’ death. “He makes the sadness of an infamous tragedy vivid and heartfelt to everyone who reads it, whether they have connection to the tragedy or not.” (Devitt, 1) By approaching these
Bereavement is facing the loss of a loved one. Death can be of natural or medical cause. The loss of a dear one causes a lot of grief; grieving is more psychological as it involves different types of feelings (Madison). Grieving over someone cannot be limited to a time frame; it differs for each person as reactions to grief varies considerably. The process of grief consists of several facets namely: emotional, physical, cognitive and behavioral (Barbato & Irwin, 1992; Worden, 1991; Worden, 2009).
...ttachment or emotion. Again, Heaney repeats the use of a discourse marker, to highlight how vividly he remembers the terrible time “Next morning, I went up into the room”. In contrast to the rest of the poem, Heaney finally writes more personally, beginning with the personal pronoun “I”. He describes his memory with an atmosphere that is soft and peaceful “Snowdrops and Candles soothed the bedside” as opposed to the harsh and angry adjectives previously used such as “stanched” and “crying”. With this, Heaney is becoming more and more intimate with his time alone with his brother’s body, and can finally get peace of mind about the death, but still finding the inevitable sadness one feels with the loss of a loved one “A four foot box, a foot for every year”, indirectly telling the reader how young his brother was, and describing that how unfortunate the death was.
Throughout life individuals go through many different losses in life. In Grief and Losses across the Lifespan I have learned that death is not the only type of loss that people experience in life. Before taking this course, I was not aware of the multiple type of loss individual could experience. For most individuals not educated on these losses, they look at them as expected. From the typical occurrence of these loss they become disenfranchised by society which causes people to experience complicated grief. As people develop through different age groups they experience different typical and maturational losses, that need to be grieved. As I age I anticipate going through different losses that will each have a lasting effect on me. Some of
The death of a loved one can be tragic. It often alters how people think, feel, and act. Some people withdraw from life, some move closer to God, and some appear to lose their minds. Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Samuel Johnson both lost someone very close to them, but found very different ways to deal with their losses.
On the surface the poem seems to be a meditation on past events and actions, a contemplative reflection about what has gone on before. Research into the poem informs us that the poem is written with a sense of irony
The topic of death, an obvious similarity: That Emily Dickinson states in the title of these poems. Death is a very strong word, with meaning and the power to capture an audience. Emily Dickinson inserts slant rhyme and exact rhyme, like used in church hymns. There are several places where Dickinson inserts a slant rhyme in “Because I could not stop for Death.” For example, in the in the fourth stanza words chill and tulle again with third stanza she uses a slant rhyme between the words ring with sun “at recess- in the Ring...setting Sun.” Also, in the other poem “I heard a fly buzz – when I died” has several slant rhymes one of them is in the first stanza, room rhymes with storm “In the room…of storm” (lines 2-4) and exact thyme that is in lines 14 and 16 with words “me” and “see.” Personification is another similar...
The poem is not said to of been set in a particular place but I
the poem what he would normally have written a paragraph or more on. For example,
In my life time, I have experienced many deaths. I have never had anyone that was very close to me die, but I have shed tears over many deaths that I knew traumatically impacted the people that I love. The first death that influenced me was the death of my grandfather. My grandfather passed away when I was very young, so I never really got the chance to know him. My papaw Tom was my mothers dad, and she was very upset after his passing. Seeing my mom get upset caused me to be sad. The second death that influenced my life was the death of my great grandmother. My great grandmother was a very healthy women her whole life. When she was ninety three she had
Earlier this year death hit me hard. I had never experienced a funeral before, never been close to a family member that passed away, and never had anything bad happen to my family at all, truthfully. Until that one
Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow?, leads me to believe that Big