essay questions on mid term break

Mid-Term Break

By seamus heaney, mid-term break essay questions.

Discuss the significance of the "college sick bay."

The speaker's sojourn in his school's infirmary, as he waits to be picked up for his brother's wake, foreshadows the poem's upcoming events. The setting hints at death, illness, and dying. At the same time, it offers a glimpse at a medicalized, institutional world of death that—like the ambulance that later appears to deliver the brother's body—contrasts with the traditional domesticity of the wake. Meanwhile, the speaker's explanation that he has spent his day in the sick bay, counting tolling bells, indicates that he is alone and without any comfort at school. Again, this cold, institutional setting contrasts sharply with the overwhelmingly social ambiance he encounters at home.

Discuss the form and stanza length of "Mid-Term Break."

The stanza length and variation of "Mid-Term Break" reflect the speaker's emotional state of shock and distress, as well as his effort to tamp down his expressions of those emotions. The steady rhythm of tercets creates a sense of control, which, alongside the speaker's understated language, displays his attempts to manage or even deny the brutal reality of his brother's death. However, as the speaker notes the small size of his brother's coffin, and considers his young age, the tercet structure falls away: the poem's last line is in a stanza of its own. This breakdown of structure reflects a breakdown of control and of speech, echoing a grief that persists beyond verbal description.

Mid-Term Break Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Mid-Term Break is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Contrast the readers reaction of the two parents

Are you referring to the book Mid-Term Break?

Why was the boy embarrassed?

From the text:

I was embarrassed because the old men who'd come over to the house kept standing up to shake my hand.

What does the child learn in the poem?

I think the child learns a few things. He discovers the impermanence of life: his young brother tragically killed by a car. He also discovers how mourning is handled in different ways. Heaney’s poem is a portrait of the reality that there is no “...

Study Guide for Mid-Term Break

Mid-Term Break study guide contains a biography of Seamus Heaney, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Mid-Term Break
• Mid-Term Break Summary
• Character List

Mid-Term Break Summary & Analysis by Seamus Heaney

• Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis
• Poetic Devices
• Vocabulary & References
• Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme
• Line-by-Line Explanations

“Mid-Term Break” was published by Irish poet Seamus Heaney in his 1966 book Death of a Naturalist. The poem is about Heaney’s brother, who was killed by a car in 1953 when he was only 4 years old, and Heaney only 14. Personal and direct, the poem describes the unexpected ways his family’s grieves as they confront this tragedy. It also notes the way that grief may upset traditional social roles.

• Read the full text of “Mid-Term Break”

The Full Text of “Mid-Term Break”

“mid-term break” summary, “mid-term break” themes.

The Nature of Grief

Line-by-line explanation & analysis of “mid-term break”.

I sat all ... ... drove me home.

In the porch ... ... a hard blow.

The baby cooed ... ... for my trouble'.

Lines 11-13

Whispers informed strangers ... ... angry tearless sighs.

Lines 14-15

At ten o'clock ... ... by the nurses.

Lines 16-18

Next morning I ... ... in six weeks.

Lines 18-22

Paler now, ... ... for every year.

“Mid-Term Break” Symbols

• Line 2: “bells”

• Line 16: “Snowdrops”

• Line 17: “candles”

“Mid-Term Break” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

End-stopped line.

• Line 2: “close.”
• Line 3: “home.”
• Line 4: “crying—”
• Line 5: “stride—”
• Line 6: “blow.”
• Line 10: “trouble'.”
• Line 11: “eldest,”
• Line 13: “sighs.”
• Line 15: “nurses.”
• Line 18: “now,”
• Line 19: “temple,”
• Line 20: “cot.”
• Line 21: “clear.”
• Line 22: “year.”
• Lines 1-2: “bay / Counting”
• Lines 7-8: “pram / When”
• Lines 8-9: “embarrassed / By”
• Lines 9-10: “hand / And”
• Lines 12-13: “hand / In”
• Lines 14-15: “arrived / With”
• Lines 16-17: “Snowdrops / And”
• Lines 17-18: “him / For”
• Line 8: “in, and”
• Line 12: “school, as”
• Line 15: “corpse, stanched”
• Line 16: “room. Snowdrops”
• Line 17: “bedside; I”
• Line 18: “weeks. Paler”
• Line 21: “scars, the”
• Line 22: “box, a”

Alliteration

• Line 1: “c,” “b”
• Line 2: “C,” “b,” “c,” “l,” “c,” “l”
• Line 3: “cl”
• Line 4: “m,” “m”
• Line 5: “H,” “h”
• Line 12: “A,” “a,” “a,” “m,” “m,” “h,” “m,” “h”
• Line 13: “h,” “a”
• Line 14: “A,” “a,” “a”
• Line 15: “b,” “b”
• Line 16: “S”
• Line 17: “s,” “s”
• Line 18: “F,” “f,” “s,” “P”
• Line 19: “p,” “b,” “h,” “l”
• Line 20: “H,” “l,” “f,” “f”
• Line 22: “f,” “f,” “f,” “f”
• Line 2: “e,” “e,” “o”
• Line 3: “o,” “o,” “o”
• Line 4: “I,” “y,” “y”
• Line 5: “a,” “a,” “i,” “i”
• Line 6: “i,” “i,” “i,” “i,” “a,” “a”
• Line 7: “a,” “au,” “a,” “a”
• Line 8: “I,” “a,” “I,” “a”
• Line 9: “a,” “a”
• Line 11: “i,” “i”
• Line 12: “a,” “a,” “a”
• Line 13: “a,” “a,” “i”
• Line 14: “A,” “a,” “i”
• Line 15: “a,” “a,” “a”
• Line 16: “o,” “oo”
• Line 17: “A,” “a,” “oo,” “i,” “I”
• Line 18: “i,” “i”
• Line 19: “o,” “o,” “e,” “e”
• Line 20: “o,” “i,” “i,” “o”
• Line 21: “au,” “o”
• Line 22: “ou,” “oo,” “oo,” “o,” “y,” “ea”
• Line 1: “s,” “ll,” “n,” “n,” “c,” “ll,” “s,” “ck,” “b”
• Line 2: “C,” “n,” “b,” “ll,” “s,” “kn,” “ll,” “cl,” “ss,” “s,” “cl,” “s”
• Line 3: “t,” “t,” “cl,” “r,” “r,” “r,” “m,” “m”
• Line 4: “m,” “m,” “th,” “r,” “r”
• Line 5: “H,” “h,” “n,” “n,” “r,” “n,” “h,” “s,” “r,” “d”
• Line 6: “d,” “b,” “w”
• Line 7: “b,” “b,” “c,” “d,” “nd,” “d,” “nd,” “r,” “ck,” “d,” “r,” “m”
• Line 8: “c,” “m,” “n,” “n,” “m”
• Line 9: “d,” “m,” “n,” “nd,” “m,” “nd”
• Line 10: “t,” “rr,” “t,” “r”
• Line 11: “rs,” “r,” “s,” “t,” “r,” “rs,” “s,” “s,” “t”
• Line 12: “m,” “m,” “h,” “d,” “m,” “h,” “d”
• Line 13: “h,” “r,” “s,” “t,” “r,” “t,” “r,” “ss,” “s,” “s”
• Line 14: “t,” “t,” “rr”
• Line 15: “r,” “s,” “s,” “n,” “d,” “nd,” “b,” “nd,” “d,” “b”
• Line 16: “S,” “d,” “s”
• Line 17: “nd,” “nd,” “s,” “s,” “d,” “e,” “s,” “d,” “s”
• Line 18: “F,” “r,” “f,” “r,” “st,” “t,” “s,” “x,” “s,” “P”
• Line 19: “p,” “pp,” “l,” “t,” “p,” “l”
• Line 20: “l,” “f,” “r,” “f,” “b,” “x,” “c”
• Line 21: “c,” “r,” “m,” “r,” “ck,” “m,” “c”
• Line 22: “f,” “r,” “f,” “t,” “f,” “t,” “f,” “r,” “r,” “y,” “y,” “r”
• Line 20: “He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.”
• Line 19: “Wearing a poppy bruise”

Polysyndeton

• Line 7: “The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram”
• Line 20: “four-foot box”
• Line 22: “A four-foot box, a foot for every year.”

“Mid-Term Break” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• In His Stride
• Four-foot box
• (Location in poem: Line 1: “college”)

Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Mid-Term Break”

Rhyme scheme, “mid-term break” speaker, “mid-term break” setting, literary and historical context of “mid-term break”, more “mid-term break” resources, external resources.

Seamus Heaney's 10 Best Poems — A list of Heaney's 10 Best Poems from the Telegraph—offering a good introduction to his broader work.

Heaney Restrospective — A critical appraisal of the poet's life and work, from Naomi Schalit.

Seamus Heaney's Life — A detailed biography from the Poetry Foundation.

Seamus Heaney Reads "Mid-Term Break" — The poet reads his own poem aloud for the Poetry Ireland Lunchtime Reading Series.

Heaney's Family on Life with the Poet — In an article for the Guardian Newspaper, Seamus Heaney's family reflect on life with Heaney.

LitCharts on Other Poems by Seamus Heaney

Blackberry-Picking

Death of a Naturalist

Out of the Bag

Personal Helicon

Requiem for the Croppies

Storm on the Island

The Tollund Man

Everything you need for every book you read.

Poetry Prof

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Mid-Term Break

Seamus Heaney shares with us a sad memory from his childhood.

“… the most skilful and profound poet writing in English today.” Edward Mendelson (NYT Review of Opened Ground)

Seamus Heaney is one of  the most recognisable names in English-language poetry . It’s quite possible that you could hear his writerly voice as a child, study him as you get older (his poems are often anthologised or selected for GCSE and A Level study) and come to regard him as an old familiar friend through your adult life. Heaney won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995 and turned down the position of Poet Laureate when it was offered to him,  possibly because he regards himself as Irish, not British : after lunching with the Queen he said, “I have nothing against the Queen personally”; but in 1982 he published the lines, “My passport’s green/ No glass of ours was ever raised/ To toast the Queen.” Before  his death in 2013 he wrote about Irish community life, people’s connection with the land ( Storm on the Island; Bogland ), politics and history (particularly The Troubles), his own rural upbringing and journey to becoming a writer ( Follower; Digging; Personal Helicon ). A recognisable Heaney trait is filtering subject matter through a child’s looking-glass lens. His most famous poems ( Death of a Naturalist  and  Blackberry Picking) are directly concerned with childhood, in particular the loss of childhood innocence as one grows older.  Mid-Term Break (from the collection  Death of a Naturalist , written in 1966) shares this theme, which it explores through recounting an experience from the poet’s own history; when Seamus Heaney was still a child, his younger brother Christopher was hit and killed by a car:

On first reading, apart from obviously being written in stanzaic form (which we’ll get to later) the poem is actually quite, well… unpoetic! In some respects, it’s more like a narrative in the way it tells the story of Heaney’s discovery of his brother’s death. The poem contains clear narrative features such as the building of suspense (see how the poem counts down time for us:  two o’clock, ten o’clock, next morning ), direct speech (‘sorry for my trouble’ ) and even brief  characterisation : I met my father crying – he had always taken funerals in his stride –  In a way,  Mid-Term Break is a narrative: it follows a well-worn narrative pattern called the ‘rites of passage’ by which a young person must leave the safety (and ignorance) of childhood and undergo a journey of discovery. Along the way, the child acquires special knowledge and undergoes a transformation, shedding the childish self like a snake sheds a skin and emerging as a new, older and wiser person. That’s why the poem begins in the  college sick bay , which represents the safe world of a child; soon the boy is taken home , where he must pass through various adult hands, all ushering him towards the place where he will discover the truth hiding at the heart of the poem. The  room in which he encounters his brother – and has his first experience of the reality of death – is the place where this awful knowledge is contained and it is no accident that he is left alone to experience his first taste of the adult world all by himself.

At the start of the story, though, the boy is unaware of what lies in store; both he and we, the readers, wonder what is happening to take him out of class and home from school early. There are a couple of clues:  knelling is a word used only to describe the sound of a bell; it is especially associated with bells that ring to proclaim somebody’s death. In a ‘rites of passage’ story, in order for a person to grow and change their childish self must symbolically die. As well as  foreshadowing  the death of the speaker’s younger brother, the bells he hears  c ounting down  c lasses to a  c lose also signify the death of his childhood and induction into the adult world.  Alliteration  plays a part here. Look at all those hard C sounds in the line above, and add  c ollege si ck bay and  two o’ c lo ck .  This kind of alliteration is known as guttural. Guttural is good at exposing negative emotions, and also resembles the ticking of a clock, counting down the time until the boy must experience the truth that is waiting for him.

When the boy arrives home he meets his father standing on the  porch . Here is an example of a ‘threshold’: a boundary between two ‘worlds.’ If the school represented a ‘safe’ place where he was sheltered and protected from hard truth, his house is the site of his revelation and the place where he will be exposed to the truth about how things are in the ‘real’ world. The  porch is the dividing line between these two ‘worlds.’ His father (and  Big Jim Evans ) function as symbolic gatekeepers. They know the truth, but do not reveal it to the boy, except through cryptic clues such as  it had been a hard blow, language that suggests concealed emotion and also echoes the accident that killed his younger brother. Instead they usher him inside, where he will be passed from hand to hand, until he reaches his brother’s bedside . At this point, he will be by himself and have to face the reality of the world alone. 

Just as in a good narrative,  perspective is a crucial reason why the poem works so well. The speaker’s youth and naïvete brings a touch of  irony into the poem. Each stanza gives more little clues, information hiding in plain sight, that the boy’s youth prevents him from fully understanding. But as readers looking in from outside, it’s relatively easy for us to piece together the puzzle at the heart of the story. The first puzzle-piece is probably the word knelling  in stanza 1. It’s the kind of word a young boy wouldn’t know (the adult writer uses it as he looks back on his childhood experience). In stanza 2 – embedded inside two  hyphens  as an extra detail – is the admission that the speaker’s father  had always taken funerals in his stride . In the third stanza old men stand up in formal way to  shake my hand , and in the fourth we can infer from the  whispers that  informed strangers I was the eldest  that something has happened to a member of the boy’s family. By the time the  ambulance arrived with the corpse most readers will be prepared for the awful knowledge of the boy’s younger brother’s tragic accident. 

Written about a childhood time when nothing in the adult world makes sense (you can almost hear the boy thinking, ‘Why are they whispering? Why are these old men standing up to shake my hand?’) the  voice of the speaker conveys Heaney’s thoughts and curiously detached feelings through this bewildering day. Interestingly, most of the  diction in the poem is cool, calm and collected, and the young speaker comes across as matter-of-fact above anything else. Read the poem again to try and find examples of emotive language – it’s tough, right? That’s not to say the poem isn’t emotional, but emotion comes more from the reader’s grasping of the situation than from the poem itself. The boy himself reports everything with simplicity:  stanched and bandaged is quite clinical;  I saw him for the first time in six weeks a simple matter-of-fact statement. The clinical, detached  tone aptly conveys the way a young boy might approach his first encounter with death. Too young to really grasp the significance of events, he reacts in a way that might even be construed as indifferent. 

Something the poem explores wonderfully well is the stoic, masculine way that men deal with their emotions, particularly grief. The speaker’s father had been crying, but the poem is quick to point out that normally he takes things in their stride.  Big Jim Evans is unable to use straightforward language when talking to the young boy and euphemises his feelings as  a hard blow .  Euphemism is language that is uses to disguise, or avoid, speaking hard truths and it’s again ironic that somebody  big, when faced with a harsh reality, finds it difficult to confront.  Old men stand up to shake my hand reveals how formality and custom are used (again by men) to manage difficult emotions. Whispers is an onomatopoeia that conjures the sound of people talking around him, even behind his back, but hesitant when it comes to admitting the truth. The mother, true to type, is permitted to cough out her angry tearless sighs . She has been exhausted by her outpouring of emotion: by contrast, the men keep theirs firmly shut away inside. A detail that throws the men’s stoicism into sharp relief is the mention of the baby who cooed and laughed in the pram. The contrast of such unknowing, innocent behaviour with the reserved and awkward behaviour of the adults only reinforces the formality of their actions.

According to the poetic tradition of the  turn , or  volta , at a certain point in a poem the focus shifts, the tone changes or a counterpoint is presented.  Mid-Term Break’s turn is disguised by form, hidden inside the fifth stanza. After the description of mother’s  sighs  our attention is taken away from the reactions of those gathered in the house and placed onto the ambulance, there to deliver the body of the speaker’s younger brother.  At ten o’clock is the subtle marker used to make this change. After this point, the poem homes in on the boy’s experience only and we are with him through the terrible walk up the stairs, into the room where his brother’s body is laid in state  stanched (like the more common ‘staunch,’ this word means to restrict the flow of blood; you can read it to mean ‘cleaned’)  and bandaged by nurses .  Assonance plays a part in this stanza: the letter A flows through the lines in all kinds of words such as a ngry , a mbul a nce a rrived , st a nched a nd b a nd a ged . Assonance helps manage the tension in the poem at this crucial moment – the boy is only steps away from entering the room himself and coming face to face with his brother after his awful accident.

Once he enters the site of revelation, the poem intensifies its use of imagery.  The evidence of his brother’s wound is described as a poppy bruise , the vivid red colour that flashes into our minds when we read poppy contrasts with the white images suggested by paler now ,   stanched and bandaged and  snowdrops (white flowers)  and candles soothed the bedside . Like the  knelling bells , this use of language comes from the older writer looking back on his childish persona. Look again at the word ‘soothed.’ Flowers and candles are  personified to have a calming effect on the scene, and we are invited to compare the ritual trappings of funerals with the formality of behaviour displayed by the men earlier in the poem. The votive candles have a particularly calming effect, bathing the scene in warmth despite the ‘cold’ setting and tone. Perhaps Heaney wants us to think that the objects in the room, the ritual ‘embalming’ of the corpse – like the words and behaviour of the people downstairs – are all bent to the same purpose: the dulling of grief in order to allow men to cope with, and display stoicism in the face of, this ‘unmanly’ emotion.

The importance of ritual is echoed in the poem’s form.  Heaney is a traditional poet, and his poetry gestures towards pre-modern times .  Mid-Term Break is written in unrhymed  tercets  (a tercet is a group of three lines) and Heaney employs  stanzaic form to echo both the rituals surrounding death and funerals, and to frame the procession by which the boy is brought from his school to the bedside. Try breaking the journey into stages, imagining him passing various thresholds along the way: he leaves the  college sick bay , passes through the  porch into the main house, and goes up to  the room . Each stanza narrows and focuses the boy’s journey until he reaches the  bedside , at which point the poem is at its most intimate: just the boy, his brother and us watching from the outside. The  repetition of  hands is a nice detail helping us to see that he is quite literally passed from hand-to-hand by various adults. He is taken by his neighbour, to his father, through a roomful of relatives and strangers (who  shake his hand ) to his mother (who  held my hand ). Finally, he visits the bedside where he is alone. The structure of this journey is like a mini ‘rites of passage’ story, taking a child from a safe, protected world and exposing him to the truth and danger of the adult world.   

Suggested Poems for Comparison

• Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney

If you liked Mid-Term Break , you’ll love Death of a Naturalist . The title poem from his 1966 collection (from which Mid-Term Break is taken), the poem’s speaker – Heaney as a child – witnesses an invasion of angry frogs who he describes as ‘the great slime kings.’

• Hide and Seek by Vernon Scannell

If you’ve ever played this childhood game, you might recognise what happens to the small boy in this poem – abandoned in the dark by those he thought were his friends. It’s a little taste of how things really work out in the real world, represented by the eerie way the empty garden seems to look back at him at the end of the poem.

• Little Red Cap by Carol Ann Duffy

It’s not only boys who go on rites of passage adventures. In this reworking of the classic fairytale ( Little Red Riding Hood ), Duffy imagines herself as the titular heroine, a person with whom it is not wise to mess!

Additional Resources

If you are teaching or studying  Mid-Term Break  at school or college, or if you simply enjoyed this analysis of the poem and would like to discover more, you might like to purchase our bespoke study bundle for this poem. It’s only £2 and includes: 

• 4 pages of activities that can be printed and folded into a booklet for use in class, at home, for self-study or revision.
• Study Questions with guidance for how to answer in full paragraphs.
• A sample Point, Evidence, Explanation paragraph for essay writing. 
• An interactive and editable powerpoint, giving line-by-line analysis of all the poetic and technical features of the poem. 
• An in-depth worksheet with a focus on   explaining stanzaic form .
• A fun crossword-quiz, perfect for a recap lesson or for revision.
• 4 practice Essay Questions – and one complete model Essay Plan.

And… discuss! 

What did you think of Seamus Heaney’s poem? Have you read any of his other works that you could recommend to people who enjoyed Mid-Term Break? How did you feel at the end of this poem – was the revelation a shock to you? Why not leave a comment, start a discussion or share your ideas in the comment section below. And, for daily nuggets of analysis and all-new illustrations, don’t forget to find and follow Poetry Prof on Instagram.

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Mid-Term Break

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Summary and Study Guide

“Mid-Term Break” is one of the best-known poems by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney, featured in his 1966 debut collection Death of a Naturalist , published when Heaney was only 27. It describes the poet’s childhood memory of returning home from school following the death of his younger brother in a car accident. The poem’s use of regular stanza forms and tight control of meter mark it as a typical example of Heaney’s formalist style , which followed in the footsteps of earlier Irish poet W.B. Yeats (1865-1939), whose work frequently sought to marry deeply personal material with a tight formal control. However, Yeats’s poems are often highly emotive and sometimes mystical, while Heaney’s verse is more restrained, showing the influence of the English poets W.H. Auden and Stephen Spender—so much so that some Irish critics accused Heaney of being too keen to follow in the English poetical tradition. Yet Heaney always maintained a strong connection with Ireland, and in particular the rural areas he grew up in which provide the setting for “Mid-Term Break.”

Poet Biography

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Seamus Heaney was born in 1939 on a farm in County Derry, Northern Ireland, as the eldest of nine siblings in a Catholic family. He attended the local primary school until winning a scholarship to study as a boarder at St. Columb’s College in the nearby town of Derry at age 12. The event memorialized in “Mid-Term Break”—the death of his second youngest brother, four-year-old Christopher, in a car accident—occurred shortly after.

In 1957, Heaney went on to study English Literature at Queen’s University in Belfast. He became acquainted with the lecturer and poet Philip Hobsbaum, an early mentor who encouraged Heaney to hone his poems into what would become his first collection Death of a Naturalist (1966), which debuted to glowing reviews. After since qualifying as a teacher in 1962, Heaney taught in Belfast, publishing his second collection, Door into the Dark , in 1969. In 1972 he and his pregnant wife Marie moved to a cottage in rural County Wicklow, an experience that influenced the poems in the collection Wintering Out (1972).

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The 1970s saw increasing violence in Northern Ireland, as the Catholic IRA fought a campaign against the British army and Protestant paramilitary groups. Bombings and murders were frequent on both sides, with innocent civilians caught in the crossfire. In 1975, Heaney, his wife, and their three young children moved to Dublin. Heaney’s poems in the collection North (1975) address contemporary violence and violence throughout history, frequently focusing on forgotten victims—for instance, human sacrifices whose bodies were preserved in the peat bogs of Ireland and Denmark. The 1979 collection Field Work also addresses these themes, along with self-scrutiny about the purpose of poetry in a society that seemed to be becoming more and not less violent.

With an increasingly global reputation, Heaney was a visiting professor of poetry at various US universities, including Harvard, where he received tenure in 1985, though he continued to live in Ireland. After winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1995, Heaney grew increasingly conscious of the public and political weight of his position, and in the same year his poem “From the Republic of Conscience” showed his ongoing commitment to the peace process in Northern Ireland. In 1999, Heaney’s translation of the medieval epic Beowulf into English won him a surprise mass audience and was heralded as displaying masterful technique, gaining him his second Whitbread Prize. Heaney suffered a stroke in 2006; the poems dealing with this experience in his 2010 collection Human Chain won him the Forward Prize, the only major poetry prize he had not yet won. Heaney died at home in 2013, at age 74. His funeral in Dublin was broadcast live on Irish state television, a measure of the stature he had achieved as one of Ireland and the world’s most famous poets.

Heaney, Seamus, " Mid-Term Break " (1966). Poetry Foundation

The title of the poem “Mid-Term Break” alludes to the short holiday half way through a school term, and the poem’s opening lines identify the speaker as a school student listening to the bells ringing for the end of classes while he waits in a college infirmary to be taken home. There is no suggestion that he is ill however, and the arrival of neighbors to pick him up and drive him home, together with the sight of his father crying in the porch on his arrival home strongly hint that a tragedy has befallen the family.

After an awkward exchange with a man named Big Jim Evans, who says "It was a hard blow,” (Line 6) the speaker goes past a baby in its pram and inside the house where various “old men” shake his hand (Line 9), causing him to feel embarrassment. The speaker feels overly observed and the unpleasant center of attention, overhearing people whispering about him, saying to “strangers” that he was “the eldest” (Line 11). The speaker’s mother holds his hand, unable to say anything and instead reduced to “angry tearless sighs” (Line 13). Finally, the tragic cause of all these events appears in the form of an ambulance bearing the body of the speaker’s younger brother, “stanched and bandaged” (Line 15) after the car accident which caused his death.

At the start of the sixth of the poem’s seven full stanzas, we are told that a night has passed and it is the morning after. The speaker visits the body in the room where it has been laid out in accordance with Catholic funeral tradition, with candles and snowdrops by the bedside. The speaker closely observes the dead body of his brother, noting details such as the “poppy bruise” on his forehead (Line 19) and the small size of the coffin. The poem continues to dwell on this image, reminding us in the last of its 22 lines that the length of the coffin, four feet, is the same as the number of years his brother was alive.

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Mid-term break essay

‘Mid-term Break’ Seamus Heaney

Often poetry describes a significant event. Choose such a poem and write about its effectiveness in communicating this event.

‘Mid-term Break’ by Seamus Heaney is about a boy who is away at school when his little brother gets hit by a car and dies. The poem talks you through him being brought home by his neighbours, not knowing what is going on and then put in this uncomfortable situation. This poem is good at describing a significant event, you are not told what is going on straight away so you keen on reading and it helps you see how Seamus felt when he didn’t know what was going on.

    The title ‘Mid-term Break’ makes you think of good, happy times because a mid-term break is a holiday in the middle of a term. The feeling of the opening stanza is quite sad. Seamus chooses his words carefully to show this, he uses words like “knelling” to describe how the bells were ringing:

        “I sat all morning in the college sick bay         Counting bells knelling classes to a close”

By using the work “knelling” we immediately know that something sad or bad has happened because the word “knelling” is a word that is used to describe how bells are rung on a sad occasion.

    Seamus dose not tell you what is going on immediately to make the read want to read the whole poem to find out what is happening/ what has happened. Seamus gives the reader information in different stages in the poem to show how under informed he was at the time.

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    When Seamus got home he was confronted with his father crying on the porch, even though he had always “taken funerals in his stride”. This had come to a shock to him as he was not use to see his father cry. Big Jim Evans who by his names seems to be a big hard man was affected by this event. Seamus was embarrassed by the old men standing up to shake his and tell him they were sorry for his trouble. This was difficult for Seamus when he was a young boy because he was not used to the older men showing his lot of respect. The effect this has on him is that he seems very uncomfortable and embarrassed in this situation.

        “When I came in, and I was embarrassed

        By old men standing up to shake my hand”

This shows that Seamus felt uncomfortable with all this attention from the older men.

The baby’s reaction seems quite harsh and hard hitting. This shows that the baby was excited to see Seamus and that he is unaware what has happened. He doesn’t know that his reaction is inappropriate. This has been placed at this point in the poem to show the innocence of youth and to compare it to how the father is reacting:

        “The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram         When I came in, and I was embarrassed”

This shows that the innocent baby doesn’t understand that is was a sad occasion and that that reaction was inappropriate.  

   The mother’s reaction is quite unexpected as you would think that the mother would be crying showing a lot of emotion and the father to be taking it in his stride but not in this case as it is the other way round. This effects Seamus in such a way that he is confused why his father is crying and his mother is keeping all her emotions to her self. The effect this has on the reader is that it shows that his mother was being brave in front of Seamus to make him feel a little as ease with all that was going on. This was created by the reaction the mother was giving the strangers whispering  about Seamus:

        “Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,

        Away at school, as my mother held my hand

        In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.”

His mother was obviously up set by what had happened but was trying to be strong for Seamus.

   Seamus was in a way avoiding acknowledging that his little brother was dead by saying:

        “At ten o’clock the ambulance arrived

        With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.”

He uses word choice to show this. By using “the corpse” in stead of his brother’s name he is avoiding believing that his little brother is dead. This seems quite nasty and impersonal but it helps Seamus avoid believing that he is dead.

   The used of understatement in the poem has a great effect because it shows that he was really hurt by what happened and that many years latter it still effects him in such a way. The last line of the poem is hard hitting it makes it all real. He controls his emotion well and tries to come to senses about what happened. Seamus puts this event across extremely well as you really get to see how him and his family were feeling at the time.

   In this poem, Seamus Heaney describes a tragic significant event in his past. By using various techniques he describes this event powerfully, allowing the reader to share his experience. I think that Seamus wrote this poem well and he definitely described how this event affected him well by using great word choice.

Document Details

• Word Count 900
• Page Count 2
• Subject English

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Mid-term Break Essay Example

• Pages: 2 (464 words)
• Published: April 12, 2017
• Type: Analysis

From the first person perspective of a young school boy as the protagonist, Seamus Heaney reflects on his own childhood memory in the poem “Mid-term Break”. The reader discovers through reading the poem that Heaney returns home for the funeral of his younger brother’s car accident. The author illustrates the theme grief through diction, puns, and structure. The diction chosen in this poem are not only for the readers to understand the situation but are also very powerful and meaningful.In the beginning of the poem, the protagonist is “counting bells knelling classes to a close”.

The word knell is the sound made by a bell at a funeral. This builds up the tone of the poem, and hints the readers about the rest of the poem. Further into the poem, the protagonist “met [his] father crying” and

his mom “coughed out angry tearless signs”. The diction of “tearless” strongly contrasts to the diction of “crying”. This conveys that the mother is too upset to cry, when the dad is actually letting his feelings out. The word “break” from the title “Mid-term break” is a pun.

When that phrase is heard during the school year, it is always a happy and free time for children with family and friends but happiness is not illustrated in this poem. The word “break” can mean the family splitting apart or tree’s branches breaking which all are signs or grief and death. When "Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow" for everyone, the word “blow” can imply that a person is blowing or exhaling hard or a sudden hard stroke or hit. The structure of “Mid-term Break” is three-line-stanzas

with the exception of the last line which stands out alone.Heaney describes his brother in “a four foot box, a foot, for every year”.

The alliteration, the simplexes of the one syllable words and the abrupt ending emphasizes the sadness of the sudden death of a young child. The author uses many enjambments between lines and this gives the reader an impression of a person crying and talking at the same time with pauses in between. The reader sees this when Heaney visits his brother “in the room”, he describes his brother as “Paler now, /Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple”.The poppy makes a connection to Remembrance Day which signifies the death of soldiers in World War I.

As a result of the diction, pun and structure in the poem “Mid-term Break”, the author effectively presents the theme grief to the readers. This poem records one of his most devastating experiences in his life although he chooses to be unemotional throughout the whole poem. Heaney had lost his childhood innocence and had to face the cruel reality of what really happened.

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Mid-Term Break Analysis

Analysis of Mid-Term Break Poem by Seamus Heaney. There are stories in the poem and story in the poem “Mid- Term Break” by Seamus Heaney is about a young boy who just come back from boarding school had loss his brother in an accident. The death of the brother had give difference emotional respond by the family member about the death . Literary device make poem better and make it interesting to read . Furthermore, there are a lot of literary devices that use by Seamus in this poem.

He use personification in this poem . Personification is a figure of speech in which human characteristics are attributed to an abstract quality, animal, or inanimate objects (Personification, Encyclopedia Britannica eb. com). For examples that related to the poem is  “Counting bells knelling classes to a close”, the bells being attributed to human characteristic which is “knelling”. The word knelling is often associated with death (as with the “knelling” of a funeral bell) so this adds a morbid tone to the opening of the poem (Mid Term Break , Teachnet).

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He also uses metaphor in this poem. Metaphor is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between two unlike things that actually have something in common (About. com). Examples for the metaphor is “the corpse stanched” and “candles soothed the bedside. ”. The candles is use to create the image of sorrow and with the uses of metaphor the writer will create the visual imagery in our mind which is the candles produce a dim light that put the numb situation in that house. Read more in Online Writing « What is Your Greatest Fear? Short Story Settings »

By reading the poem also we can see that Seamus Heaney only use simile once to compare the coffin to a cot, “He lay in the four foot box as in a cot. ” Simile is a figure of speech in which two fundamentally unlike things are explicitly compared, usually in a phrase introduced by “like” or “as. ” . This tells us that the boy is four years old as they had mentioned that A four foot box, a foot for every year meaning that the boy has grown to four foot which is four years. This poem is organised with three lines per stanza, almost like an unrhymed tercet with the exception of the last line.

This structure make the last line stand out more so than the rest which shows the readers the importance of this line. In this poem there is no specific rhythm or rhyme pattern. However the last word in the poem rhymes with the last word in the stanza before. As mentioned before, Heaney used structure to outline the importance of the last line, but poems are often not read but heard and so this rhyme allows listeners to notice the emphasis on the last line. ( Analysis of “Mid-Term Break” by Seamus Heaney, Bukisa). In this poem there are several important themes such as time, age, family, pain, love and most of all death.

Death is an awkward subject that most want to avoid in life but it is also one that dominates people lives the most. We live because we don’t want to die. However there are times when unexpected death occurs, and in those times it’s the victim’s family that suffers the most. This poem takes the audience along on the speaker’s journey to accepting his beloved little brother’s death. Though family, age and love seems to be opposites of death and pain, one side cannot exist without the other. Therefore, in this poem family, love and age are all crucial themes. .( Analysis of “Mid-Term Break” by Seamus Heaney, Bukisa).

Conclusion, this poem contain show that the dead of family member cannot be easily accepted by other family member because loss of the love one is something sad and sorrow . The death can be happen every time and everywhere . The choices of language and literary devices are very appropriate and served their purpose, especially in emphasising the last line which wraps up the poem on one bitter sweet note. Read more: http://writinghood. com/online-writing/analysis-of-mid-term-break-poem-by-seamus-heaney/#ixzz2Aamu5n1d http://www. sheerpoetry. co. uk/gcse/seamus-heaney/notes-on-selected-poems/mid-term-break

Mid-term Break ————————————————- BY MICHAEL WOODS MID-TERM BREAK The subject of this poem is the death of Seamus Heaney’s younger brother, Christopher who was killed by a car at the age of four. It is a tremendously poignant poem and its emotional power derives in large measure form the fact that Heaney is very muted and understated with respect to his own emotional response. He chooses to focus more upon the reaction of his parents in order to convey the shocking impact of the death of their little boy. Usually, we must careful not to assume the “I” in a poem is, in fact, the poet.

In this case, though, we may be sure that Mid-Term Break is purely and intensely autobiographical. This beautiful lyric poem is certainly enormously moving. It presents an elder brother having to deal with a terrible trauma. As is frequently the case with Heaney, there is an arresting amalgam of manliness and tenderness in the writing that lends it both warmth and astringency at the same time. This poem is powerfully moving because of its emotional restraint and control of tone. Heaney concentrates on observed details and it is the accumulation of these details that helps to make the poem so memorable.

An elegiac tone is established at the beginning of the poem. An elegy is a poem written to commemorate a dead person who is traditionally resurrected in a benign landscape. Here, though, the little boy is recalled with clarity and realism; Heaney finishes with the rueful and terrible equation “A four foot box, a foot for every year”, which starkly conveys the shocking loss of a young child. The poem opens with a line that might easily describe any child but the second line introduces a darkly foreboding atmosphere: “I sat all morning in the college sick bay Counting bells knelling classes to a close. The word “knell” is appropriate in the context of a poem about death because it is the sound of a funeral bell. We do not normally associate school bells with death but this day was to prove horrifically different for the poet. The rhythm and alliteration also reinforce the mournful tone. The ‘c’ an ‘l’ sounda, as well as the internal rhyme of “bells” and “knelling” help to suggest both the idea of finality and of time seeming to slow down. The poet is driven home by his neighbours and not his parents, another unusual event preparing the reader for the idea that something is terribly wrong.

The fact that Heaney remembers the precise time, “two o’clock” is convincing as we all tend to remember precise timings when recalling traumatic, like changing events. Stanza two concentrates on the poet’s father’s emotional response who is “crying”. Heaney tells us that his father “had always taken funerals in his stride” but this death is unnatural as well as personal. The be bereft of a little child is unbearable for the normally rock solid father who would, we assume, be the sort of man to offer words of comfort to others just as “Big Jim Evans” offers his to Heaney’s family in “saying it was a hard blow. (line 6) There is a terrible double meaning in the phrase “hard blow” because Jim Evans, by referring to the emotional impact of Christopher’s death, also unwittingly uses language that recalls the impact of the car that killed him. The third stanza presents us with another contrast, the baby’s innocent joy at seeing his elder brother. Remembering the title of the poem, we might be tempted to hope, along with the Heaney family that this event is some terrible nightmare that might be woken up from. The baby’s normal behaviour, though, only accentuates the reality of the situation.

From a technical point of view, Heaney’s skilful use of the iambic pentameter helps to emphasise the family drama that is played out in the poem. The baby’s innocent obliviousness to the tragic circumstance of his elder brother’s return from school is captured in, “The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram. ”  The bouncy emphatic rhythm is in direct contrast to the opening stanza’s measured pace. The unusual aspect of the situation is developed further in lines 8-11 as the young Heaney is “embarrassed” by the proffering of sympathy from “old men”.

Their awkwardness is economically conveyed through their euphemistic use of language in telling him that “there were sorry” for his “trouble” (line10). The sibilant alliteration in “Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest” (line 11) captures the hushed, muted atmosphere in the house. Heaney goes on to concentrate upon his mother’s reaction to her little boys’ death who says nothing but holds his hand in her own as she “coughed out angry tearless sighs” (line 13).

The implication here is that she has cried so much that there is nothing more to cry but incensed by the driver’s failure to avoid her son. Line 14 begins with another precise time reference and the reality of the family having to receive “the corpse”. This is the first time that we know that the “trouble” is connected with. The sixth stanza recounts the poet’s visit to his brother’s room. Heaney conveys the feeling of being unable to name the reality of the situation: “Next morning I went up into the room. ” (LINE 16)

He does not go on to say that this is where his little brother is lying dead. Instead the surrounding details emphasise the atmosphere of quiet as the boys are reunited after “six weeks”. The snowdrops and candles are symbolic of life but they are also ritualistically funereal. The word “soothed” may be applicable to both the idea that the flowers and candles are placed as a comfort to the dead boy but they are also for the solace of the grieving family. Unable to articulate the reality of his brother’s death, the poet chooses to present his earlier self, noticing that he was “Paler” (line 18).

Another flower image draws attention to the apparently insignificant injury that had such a devastating effect, as well as the fragility of life with which the poppy is traditionally associated: “Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple, He lay in the four foot box as in his cot. No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear. A four foot box, a foot for every year. ” The description here becomes almost unbearably powerful because of the restraint Heaney exercises. The young boy could easily be asleep but, tragically, it is only as if he were asleep.

He will never wake up again. The word “cot”, along with the earlier use of “pram” in stanza three emphasises the unnatural eruption of death into the life of a family with very young children. It also helps to highlight the horror faced by any parent who is predeceased by a child. The final couplet is consistent in tone with the remainder of the poem. Heaney chooses to add a single line stanza to complete the poem that has seven three line stanzas preceding it. The effect of this is to present a terrible equation on its own, something that stands out baldly and inescapably.

Just as there are “No gaudy scars” visible on the poor child’s body, so too there is no lurid concentration upon injury or any self-indulgent displays of grief. The final line is, in a sense, “knocked clear” of the rest of the poem through Heaney’s decision to separate it. There is a heartbreaking logic in the statement that reminds us both of the small stature of the child and the brevity of his young life. As a lyric poem commemorating a terrible event, it is difficult to imagine anything to surpass it for control, truthfulness and austere reverential beauty. http://minwookang. wordpress. om/2011/06/19/poem-analysis-on-mid-term-break-by-seamus-heaney/   Seamus Heaney’s “Mid-term Break” portrays the speaker’s experience of confronting his little brother’s death. Understanding this poem is not as hard as other poems since the meaning is not so complicated. This poem flows similar to a narrative since it is written in first person perspective and continuously describes the scene of the funeral. Through a gloomy tone, the poet depicts two major themes; death and family love. The theme of death is prevalent in this poem. The plot itself is about a younger brother dying by a car accident.

Phrases like “my father was crying” and “sorry for my trouble” show that the dead person is one of the family members and the last line, “A four foot box, a foot for every year,” tells us that the dead one is only four years old. From these two facts readers can possibly assume that this poem is describing the death of a four-year-old brother of the speaker and conveying the tragic emotion. Also, “The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram” is ironical yet even more tragic. While all others are serious and crying, the baby doesn’t understand the situation but laughs as playing with the pram.

The child will realize the gravity and sorrow later on, which makes the poem more tragic. Family love is also an important theme in “Mid-term Break. ” Coming back home the speaker meets his family members, who are also having a hard time overcoming the agony. Death is devastating force that drives people into deep depression. However family love is what cures the wounds and stimulates the will to regain energy for living. Here in this poem the speaker says “my mother held my hand” and “In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs. ” The speaker must have felt a lot of responsibility as the “eldest” mentioned on the previous line.

Even though his heart was tearing apart, he couldn’t wail like kids. Though, in his mother’s hands he could feel relief and cry. Family love becomes a great support whenever there are heart-breaking incidents, as explained in this poem. “Mid-term Break” has many interesting points, obviously Heaney’s elaborations, even from the title. A “mid-term break” is period of a school year when students are relaxed and enjoying their leisure times. A short yet rejoicing respite in the middle of the semester, a mid-term break as the title gives an impression that this poem will have a happy and active mood.

Though, ironically, the poem turns out to be completely sad and also extremely calm. Heaney used visual imageries like “the corpse, stanched” and “candles soothed the bedside” that depict a dark, static picture to create a gloomy mood. Skimming through, one can notice that the structure of the poem is straightforward. Each stanza, except the last one, consists of three lines. At the first glimpse, the poem seems uniform. However, this poem doesn’t follow the ordinary form of tercets since there aren’t any rhymes. For example, “bay,” “close” and “home” of the first stanza doesn’t rhyme at all.

This free verse style enabled Heaney to convey the theme more clearly. If he had used the traiditional form with apparent rhyme schemes, the poem would have sounded a bit more playful and readers would be distracted by the ‘sound’ the poem is presenting. However, since there aren’t any rhymes, readers focus on the words themselves and also the tone is more like a narrative or thorough description rather than a mere poem. There is one more point very exceptional in this poem, which is the last line. The last line has only nine words, “A four foot box, a foot for every year. And it is the last stanza. This structure visually emphasizes the last line, showing that it has much importance. Also, in this poem there is no specific rhythm or rhyme pattern. However the last word in the poem rhymes with the last word of the previous stanza. Hence, it is clear that Heaney gave variation on the poem’s structure to outline the importance of the last line. Moreover, the very last line sums up the much of the whole poem; illustrating the coffin, the speaker is conveying the ambience of extreme sadness. Everyone feels sorrowful when confronting a death of a person.

One would be especially sad when it is a person whom you know, and even more if it is your family. And lastly, if it’s a death of a really young boy who lived only for four years and got killed by an accident, the death is much more tragic. So Heaney used alliteration, assonance and also repetition to add even greater emphasis on the “four foot box,” suggesting how important this line is. This poem, however, has more significance if the poet Seamus Heaney’s life and literary works are put into consideration. Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet who was eeply concerned about his national identity. His literary works in his earlier years are mostly about the identity of Irish people, fighting against the oppression of English influence. Many of his poems were even political in its purpose. Later on, his poems changed its theme to cultural diversity. On the other hand, this poem is different from Heaney’s typical poems. Not about nationalism or about overcoming nationalism, this poem focuses on universal topics: death and family. These themes do not really reflect societal issues.

In some ways, this poem, “Mid-term Break,” isn’t that influential probably why it is less well-known than his other poems. However, universal themes like death are what human beings have been questioning for centuries or even millenniums. Because of this, any one from any culture can understand and appreciate this poem, the reason why this poem is significant. Therefore, “Mid-term Break” by Seamus Heaney is a valuable literary piece because it has deeply and accurately explored the feelings of death and beautifully conveyed the emotion through written language.

Also, the poem shows that love and death cannot be really separated with each other. The more one loves, the more the death of the person hurts. This poem effectively delivered this heartbreaking reality and provided the readers a chance to ponder on meanings of death and family love. http://www. stmonicas. co. uk/Resources/user/docs/English/KS4%20-%20Literature%20Revision/Literature%20Revision/Mid%20Term%20Break%20notes. pdf Mid Term Break Meaning The poem is about the death of Heaney’s infant brother (Christopher) and how people (including himself) reacted to this.

The poem’s title suggests a holiday but this “break” does not happen for pleasant reasons. Metaphorical meaning In the poem Heaney explores people’s unnatural reactions to death. Attitudes and ideas This is an incredibly sad poem. The word ‘break’ suggests holiday but in this case it is far from any happy holiday we can imagine. Heaney talks about his father, who is apparently always strong at other funerals, but is distraught (very upset) by his child’s death, while the mother is too angry to cry. The young Seamus is made uneasy by hand shaking and euphemisms (like “Sorry for my trouble”), and by whispers about him.

When late at night the child’s body is returned Heaney sees this as “the corpse” (not a person). This contrasts wonderfully with the final section of the poem, where he is alone with his brother. Note the personal pronouns “him”, “his”, “he” – as opposed to “the corpse” – this brings a sense of closeness between the two brothers. The calm mood is beautifully shown in the imagery (“Snowdrops/And candles soothed the bedside” – literally they soothed the young Heaney). The flowers are a symbol in the poem, but also in reality for the family (a symbol of new life, after death).

The bruise is seen as not really part of the boy – he is “wearing” it (a metaphor), as if it could come off. Heaney likens the bruise to the poppy, a flower linked with death and soothing of pain (opiates come from poppies). The child appears as if sleeping (a simile). We contrast the ugly “corpse, stanched and bandaged”, which becomes a sleeping child – dead. The last line of the poem is most poignant and skilful – the size of the coffin is the measure of the child’s life. Language As stated above: imagery, metaphors, and similes.

Also, assonance and alliteration are used to emphasise sounds and feelings. For example ‘bells knelling’ is assonance and emphasises the sound of funeral bells and the idea of time dragging on. Themes Life/Death, sadness and relationships. Structure The poem has a clear formal structure, in three line stanzas. There are occasional rhymes but the poem’s last two lines form a rhyming couplet, and emphasizes the shortness of the child’s life. Many of the lines run on (enjambement) – they are stopped only in the last line of a stanza, and in three cases the lines run on from one stanza to the next. ttp://www. studymode. com/essays/Mid-Term-Break-Poetry-Analysi-466146. html Mid Term Break Poetry Analysis By erikamuldoon, Nov 2010 | 4 Pages (829 Words) | 517 Views The poem ‘Mid- Term Break’ describes the phenomenal loss that a family is suffering from the death of a child and brother. It is written from a young boy’s perspective as it continues to inform the audience of the grieve suffering that the family is currently enduring. It focuses on the feelings of the family and the funeral being the first time that the young boy has seen his brother since a car accident.

The structure of the poem ‘Mid-Term Break’ positions its audiences in a specific way throughout the use of structure. The following poem includes 8 stanzas each 3 sentences long. However, towards the end of the poem standing alone is the last stanza, it includes only 1 sentence. This was separated from the rest of the text to emphasize the ending of the poem as it is possibly the most important line. It reinforces the devastation of the event that has occurred whilst highlighting the impact that the death has had on the family. Additionally, each stanza has only 2 sentence most.

This allows the author to move time quickly. This is important within the poem as it often changes scenery quite quickly and due to the stanza’s being short, this allows the author to do so. It is clear that the poem has a slight lack of punctuation as the sentence structure is incorrect. Each doesn’t end with a full stop although, starts with a capital letter. This demonstrates that the boy may not have learnt much punctuation whilst at the same time gives its audience an insight into the young age of the boy. The overall tone of the poem is sombre and depressing.

Although we are soothed throughout mid way of the poem through Heaney’s use of language, the majority of the poem is filled with deep sadness due to the life of the infant that is cut short. Moreover, the title of the poem is slightly confusing as it suggests a ‘break’ meaning holidays or happiness however; reading the poem it contradicts in the fact that this ‘break’ was not filled with happiness or joy. http://www. helium. com/items/1778745-a-poignant-poem-by-seamus-heaney Poetry analysis: Mid-Term Break, by Seamus Heaney by Liz Allen Created on: March 20, 2010   Last Updated: July 02, 2012

With the title ‘Mid-Term Break’ Seamus Heaney suggests that this is a poem focusing on a childhood memory. This was, however, no happy break from school. The first stanza does not explain what the reason for the break was, but Heaney’s wait in the sick bay sets up a feeling that something is wrong. The use of the word ‘knelling’ rather than ‘tolling’ for the school bell has connotations of death. We discover during the course of the poem that Heaney was returning home for the funeral of his younger brother who had been killed in a road accident.

The second stanza shows how devastating this tragic accident was for Heaney’s family. Heaney remembers that he met his father ‘crying- / He had always taken funerals in his stride’. The third stanza, in contrast, opens with a description of the baby of the family that ‘cooed and laughed and rocked the pram’, showing that in some aspects family life went on as usual amid the grief. The third and fourth stanzas are linked by enjambment and by the description of Heaney’s feelings on confronting those who had come to pay their respects.

Heaney felt ’embarrassed / By old men’ as they stood up, shook his hand and expressed their sorrow. It must indeed have been strange and probably uncomfortable for a young boy to find himself in a situation of reversed roles. He was aware of ‘whispers’ as acquaintances told strangers that he was the eldest child of the family and attended boarding school. The fourth and fifth stanzas are also linked by enjambment and show how different Heaney’s mother’s reaction to the event was from his father’s.

As she held his hand she ‘coughed out angry tearless sighs’, conveying the sense that she was too upset to cry but sensitive to the need of her eldest child for comfort. In the fifth stanza Heaney describes in a matter-of-fact way that the ambulance brought the ‘corpse’, giving a sense that at first Heaney could perhaps not think of the body as being that of his brother. The tone changes, however, in the sixth stanza as Heaney goes up alone to see his brother’s body the following morning. He describes the presence of snowdrops and candles as soothing the bedside; this is a transferred epithet, as they actually soothed his feelings.

Heaney again uses enjambment to link this stanza with the seventh, mentioning that his brother now looked paler than the last time he had seen him six weeks previously. He uses the metaphor ‘Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple’, poppies being the colour of blood as well as a symbol of the dead. Heaney uses the word ‘box’ rather than coffin, and is reminded as he looks at his brother of the way he saw him in his cot. The final line of the seventh stanza tells us that the little boy had no ‘gaudy

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