Joshua Bateman
Mrs. Vogt
Mid Term Break
9-28-10
“Mid-Term Break”
“Mid-Term Break” by Seamus Heaney who is explaining the dearth of his little brother who is
four years old. Henry is a college student who is on mid term break and find out that his brother
was involved in an accident.
In the first verse Heaney is at the college sick bay, and on mid-term break from college.
With Heaney stating that he was in the sick bay all day sets the mood that something is wrong.
Heaney uses the word knelling, suggesting that it will be funeral bells rather than a bell for class.
The first thought that comes to mind of what Heaney must be feeling is great sorrow.
In the second verse Heaney was entering or arriving at his family home. He saw his
father, a man that he took as someone who would hide their feelings and a really strong up right
man, but when Heaney saw him, his dad was crying. Heaney was seeing a different side to his
father he may not have seen before. He then talks about “Big Jim” who says it was a hard blow,
but means it metaphorically. Though he says this to express how he feels, mean that this
accident was a hard hit to him.
As Heaney enters the house the kids, not knowing any better, are playing around while all
the mature people are in a depressed mood for they know what has happened. The adults address
Heaney like an adult.
The old men tell Heaney that they were “sorry for my trouble”, mean that they are sorry
that Heaney had to come home on such a bad occasion. People that Heaney doesn’t know all too
well because he has been off at school whisper “he is the eldest”[. Then his mother comes up to
hold her sons hand for Heaney may not exactly understand what has happen or who has died.
In verse five the subject of what everyone is expressing sorrow for it introduced when it
say the corpse arrive, right there you know for sure someone has died. The use of the world
corpse gives the feeling that the speaker doesn’t see the body of his younger brother him
anymore but a completely different figure.
It’s the next morning in verse six and Heaney explains it as a smoothing atmosphere.
For the first time in weeks Heaney is seeing his younger brother, paler now, and the flowers
around the dead boy shows purity and is in a way a repetition of the young boy. The atmosphere
change in this verse was a distinctive one for in the first couple of verses the atmosphere was
sorrow. Now Heaney sees the corpse as he young brother not just a corpse and still can’t
understand the whole situation.
Heaney states that the bruise on his brother isn’t like a ordinary bruise, but one that his
brother his just wearing it. Heaney then says how long the coffin is “four foot box” one foot for
ever year or how old his brother was; bring even more tragedy to the story.
It made me feel even more sorry for Heaney family to have to experience and deal with
the death of a child in their family, and that he is only four years old made it worse, because he
hadn’t been able to live life: “A four foot box, a foot for every year (Heaney).” Heaney waited
until the very end to tell you who had died, and that it being a child was shocking because it is
extra saddening to family members of that person. Also he makes that line all by itself so to
make sure you see it and really understand it.
This poem is a saddening one for a young child had died. At the being I figured that an adult had
die of old age, but as I read on and on I found out at the very end it was non other than a four
year old child. This was a shocking ending for I didn’t see it coming. Heaney keeps me in the
suspense of who had died by waiting to give the answer of who had died.