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8 Bri Susco
30 September 2010
AP Literature
Vogt
“Mid-Term Break” by Seamus Heaney
“Mid-Term Break” by Seamus Heaney, describes how Heaney is feeling after his
four year old brother is killed in an accident. An older brother, a student, is away at
college; he returns home on his mid-term break to bury his younger brother, Christopher.
Heaney uses imagery, metaphor, simile, and structure to create an ominous tone and
convey how the older brother feels at the time of his brother’s death.
In the beginning of the poem the older brother is still at college waiting for classes
to be over for mid-term break. Heaney uses diction such as “sick bay” to show how he is
isolated from his family at the school. While he is sitting in class he hears the “bells
knelling” as if for his brother’s death. The older brother feels alone and lost, he is with
out his family in the beginning, the neighbors drive him home, home to a broken house
hold without a brother.
In the second verse of “Mid-Term Break” by Seamus Heaney, Heaney is on his
porch at home, his father is there crying. The older brother must have been taken back by
his father’s break down; Heaney describes him as one who always took funerals “with a
stride.” This knowledge of Heaney’s father’s strength shows the reader how he appears
effected by his son’s death.
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When he enters the home in the third verse, he is greeted by a cooing
baby. The mood of the room is morose and melancholy, but the baby shows no emotion
only ignorant bliss of what is happening. The baby symbolizes life and how it carries on
even in the presence of death. When Heaney walks into the room, he is also greeted by
old men who stand up, and shake his hand, there actions embarrasses him.
In the fourth verse the older brother is approached by mourners, and they
seem to feel “sorry for my [his] troubles.” The euphemism makes the student uneasy
because he does not have any trouble at all; he still breaths. Mourners whisper about him
talking about how he is the eldest, away at school; all the talk about the older brother
makes him even more uneasy. He sits with his mother and holds her hand; he paints a
bitter and sad image.
While holding his mother’s hand, she appears angry and upset that she can
not cry, and all she can do is “cough out angry tearless sighs.” The ambulance arrives
with “the corpse” “stanched and bandaged.” Heaney does not use personal pronouns in
this verse only corpse as if to separate his brother from his body, from the mangled
lifeless shell that is left. Heaney describes the corpse as “stanched and bandaged,” stanch
literally meaning to stop the flow of blood, paints an image of a mangled body of a boy
who was stitched up and bandaged by nurses, so he could be presented to his family.
The next morning he wakes up and goes into the room where his brother’s
body lay. Heaney uses softer imagery “Snowdrops and candles.” Snowdrops symbolize
new beginnings and hop, but they also represent death and it is considered unlucky to
pick them and bring them inside; which is both ironic and symbolic of the situation in
which the student finds himself. The older brother also says “I saw him for the first time
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in six weeks.” Heaney had not used personal pronouns until this stanza; also Heaney had
seen his brother’s body the day before, but he says that the next day is the first time he
“sees” him. The tone of this stanza is different from all the rest before he is upset and
angry, and in this stanza there is a shift where the older brother finds peace with his
brother’s passing and moves from anger to peace.
Heaney uses the metaphor “wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple” to
describe his brother’s appearance but also to symbolize eternal sleep, and death. Heaney
says “wearing” to describe the bruise on his brother’s face almost to separate it from his
brother as if it were not a part of him only an earthly appearance. In the second to last line
in stanza seven, Heaney uses a simile to describe the coffin and how his brother lay in it,
“He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.” This verse makes the reader even sadder
because the line shows one how small the coffin is, and it makes it seem like Christopher
is merely sleeping.
Upon reading the last line of the poem, “A four foot box, a foot for every
year,” one is taken aback. Death is hard no matter what, but the death of a child is even
harder and when Heaney shows us bluntly it affects the reader. The last line shows the
older brother seems bitter over his brother’s passing.
Seamus Heaney’s “Mid-Term Break” is an emotional and heartbreaking
poem that captures the reader and evokes emotions through literary techniques such as
tone, metaphor and simile. Heaney also makes the reader feel what he felt through the
mood he created with his diction and word choice. Symbolism played a big role in the
poem, even though it was subtle it made the difference and changed the tone in some
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verses. “Mid-Term Break” is a poem that one cannot easily forget not only for its style
but for its mark on the heart.