Séamus Heaney's Mid-Term Break
Séamus Heaney's "Mid-Term Break" is among the few poems that have emotionally moved me. The writer uses many techniques including similes, metaphors and beautiful lexical choice to convey the sombre and miserable situation of his brother's death. In this essay I am going to analyse the language of the poem and discuss, in more detail, the techniques used to convey the real sadness of the situation.
"Mid-Term Break" is a very emotive poem in which Séamus Heaney reflects on the untimely demise of his little brother Christopher and explains what was going through his mind at that time. The poem's title suggests a holiday but this "break" does not happen for pleasant reasons. For most of the poem Heaney writes of people's differing reactions and at the end he is able to grieve honestly. In the poem Heaney travels home from school to attend the funeral of his 4-year old brother who was killed in a tragic accident. During the funeral Heaney is confronted with many issue's that make him feel uneasy while he still struggles to come to terms with the incident that stands before him: the death of his little brother!
In this poem, the writer uses many techniques to express the misery of the situation. The writer uses effective word choice in the first stanza.
"I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close"
Here we can see that the word "all" suggests that Heaney's time waiting seems intermiable which adds to the sadness of the situation. Furthermore the "counting" of the bells advocates that Heaney is bored but also implies that he is desperate to leave school which creates a very tense atmosphere. In addition the word "knelling" ironically suggests...
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...his poem and as a result successfully conveyed the sadness and misery of losing a loved one. I particularly was moved when he used a simile to describe his brother as sleeping rather than dead; it portrayed his brother as an innocent little boy. Moreover, when he created a soft image of a hideous scar I was touched as he obviously loved his brother to a great extent. I sympathise with Heaney to a great length as it is a tragic loss to lose a family member especially if it is someone you are exceptionally close to like a brother or sister. This poem has revealed to me the true significance of life and also the unimaginable pain of death. This poem has made me realise that you do not properly appreciate something until it is gone. In light of this I have learned that you should always respect and treat one another well as you never know when their time will come!
My initial response to the poem was a deep sense of empathy. This indicated to me the way the man’s body was treated after he had passed. I felt sorry for him as the poet created the strong feeling that he had a lonely life. It told us how his body became a part of the land and how he added something to the land around him after he died.
The poem's speaker mistreated,gloomy and being isolated. She is a person who loss and assimilation if not loose your self. “That this
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but you may not notice the change in perspectives until Heaney writes ‘But today it is my father who keeps stumbling……. And will not go away’ this line shows that the son who was always the one tripping and falling and lagging behind his father is finally the one in the lead. But the poem further stats that the son is getting irritated by the father because he won’t go away, he finally understands that this is what he was like to him when he was younger.
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Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow?, leads me to believe that Big
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