Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney. Essay -- English Literature

Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney.Mid-Term Break by the poet Seamus Heaney is about a personalexperience that he has encountered. It deals with the issues of lookand death in a family and also how different people cope.The title at initiative suggests that the poetry is going to be about aholiday, but as you shake into the poem further, you realise that thetitle has a far deeper and darker meaning...In the first stanza, we learn that Seamus Heaney is in a college sickbay waiting to be picked up. You get suspicious when he is beingpicked up his neighbour, which could indicate that something experthas happened.Time is passing slowly, and Heaney uses alliteration to show this.Counting bells knelling classes to a close.already so early in the poem, we sense that something is wrong due tothe poets battle cry choice of knelling. Knelling is when a church bellrings to signify a funeral. The clues become more app arnt as you movethrough the stanzas, and are very effective in arousing you rsuspicions.When Seamus Heaney arrives home, he is greeted by his fetch cry onthe porch. A stereotypical male would usually hold spinal column his feelingsand Heaney uses parenthesis to show this.In the porch i met my father crying---He had evermore taken funerals in his stride---And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow. ostensibly something had caused him great pain, and parenthesis iseffective in showing that normally Heaneys father would bottle up hisfeelings, and be strong for everyone else, taking things in hisstride. lag in the next verse.The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pramThis extract shows that the baby is oblivious(p) to its surroundings andto what is happen... ...ld, and was killed in a road trafficaccident...A quaternary foot box, a foot for every year.The poet is emphasizing the fact that his comrade was adept an innocent electric razor, and did not deserve to die at such(prenominal)(prenominal) an early stage in his life.He places this line separa te from the informality of the stanzas and thisdraws your attention to it making you think about how precious lifeis, and just when you think that you have it all figured out,something happens that makes you question the purpose of life again.We think that the natural order is for adults to die before childrenand that is why it is such a hard thing to come to terms with when achild dies in a family.A point i think that Heaney was nerve-wracking to stress to the reader, isthat no matter what tragedies happen in life, in the closing curtain we just haveto move on and accept the past so we can move onto the future.