Mid Term Break By Seamus Heaney Term paper
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Mid-term Break C.E.
The poem I am evaluating in this essay is titled “Mid-term
break” and was written by Seamus Heaney. The poem is about
the laying out to rest of a four year old told from his older brother’s perspective. I will be dealing with and trying to
explain the use of words, images and techniques and their
effects on the poem.
Starting off with the title. There is a dramatic irony to it
that is noticed when read through a couple of times. It relates to the
Child’s position in that his life was broken short i.e. "Mid-term Break". It had not been completed. As one read on one will
realise that when the title is decrypted the atmosphere is amplified
again. The sad empathetic feeling.
This is achieved through a number of factors. The most
important is the fact that it's told from the brother’s point of view. The very first word in the poem is "I". This immediately brings the reader into the poem. It opens our minds by making us think, so that the poem can be appreciated, as it should be.
“I sat all morning”. Here the emphasis is directed on all. This simple word makes us think how long, drawn out and boring this morning must’ve been for the brother (who is presumably the narrator). Also there’s a fearful expectancy, the idea of a suspenseful wait. But where was he waiting?
“In the college sick bay”. This suggests there is something wrong with the narrator. This hints he may be ill while at the same time helping to reinforce of expecting, suspense.
While he was sitting he was “Counting bells”. This adds to the continuously surmounting pile of anxiety, fear, expectancy and suspense. This is because he doesn’t just hear the bells ringing in the background; he’s counting every ring.
He isn’t just counting out of boredom (although this is one reason). He is counting because the bells are “Knelling classes to a close”. A very sinister phrase. Knell is what funeral bells ring with. “to a close.” Added with the knelling this mixes to a good effect. The bells aren’t mark the beginning of a new class to him, there’s a final, definite ending. The alliteration here comes across ads intimidating because of the hard K sounds in “counting”, “classes” and “close”.
In the next line “two ‘o’ clock” is stated by the narrator. This is important as it indicates how long he has been waiting in the sick bay. Also, when bad things happen the time is etched on ones memory. This is a subconscious thing.
The important thing about two ‘o’ clock is that the neighbours are driving him home. We wonder what’s wrong. We think about the evidence of the closing, knelling bells, the sick bay and the neighbours driving him home. At this point I came to a conclusion that something very bad was happening. A funeral!
Then begins the second verse. The first line tells us where he is (his porch) and who is there (his father).
“I met my father crying”. Heaney’s word choice here is again representative of the atmosphere. Instead of sobbing or weeping he chooses crying because it comes across as something very painful and paints a picture in ones head of the scene.
The next line reinforces what is already a fort of atmosphere and emotion telling us more about his father reading “He had always taken funerals in his stride”.
The third line “And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow” It made me really feel the last word as a sinking feeling in the stomach. This is a very empathetic verse.
Next comes a break, a relief. A kind of contrast like two extremes that helped me realise the extremity of the focused side of sadness, shock and confusion.
“The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram”. There’s onomatopoeia to “cooed”. It’s almost like ones hearing it. This makes it seem more immediate.
The line after begins “When I came in”. If poems were logical like math (which they are not and hopefully never will be) then this should be in the same line as the one before. There is a reason for this of course. The technique is called enjambment (It’s French). It is the continuation of the sense and therefore the grammatical construction beyond the end of a line of verse or the end of a couplet. Used properly as it is here it backs up the mood and leaves one hanging with suspense even if only for a few hundredths of a second.
The rest of the line is the start of another enjambment “, and I was embarrassed” which would continue “By old men standing up to shake my hand”. All this makes one think. It puts even more emphasis on the relief of the contrast.
Upon further reading I noticed that the enjambment continues until the second line of the last verse but I will come to that later.
Getting back to the last point, what significance does the narrator stating he was embarrassed have on the story? Well I think it’s a change of emotion from being sad and nauseous about the situation. It...
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