In the poem Mid-term Break by Seamus Heaney, the poem is written in three-line stanzas and end with a one liner. The poem had a sort of "short story" sound to it, there's not much of a rhyming scheme either. In the poem, Heaney uses his diction to illustrate a sad and mourning day or period of life where someone passes away. We know this because of the images he depicts, using words such as "sick", "funerals", "crying", "sorry", "angry", "tearless sighs", and many other words are use to show a sad scene.
The poem uses sounds and those sounds help dictate the whole poem. It too has an impact on the tone and mood of the poem. The sounds give off a tone of hopelessness because of the last line. The last lines, "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". These last lines impacts the reader because of the words and the meaning of the words.
In the beginning of the poem, the poem could be about a man who passed away, but towards the end of the poem, we see that it may have been a child or son because of the "four-foot box" and the foot for every year implying that the person who passed away may have been a child or a four year old. That means that the speaker could have been a father. But in the beginning of the poem, the speaker, seems like a young boy because of the "strangers" and "my mother held my hand" it depicts the image of a little boy who knows nothing about where he is.
Overall, the poem has a tone of mournful and hopelessness because of the people in the poem or mainly just the speaker seems very sad and sorrowful. The words that Heaney chooses to use are words that have a strong impact on his poems and help get the image across.
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Yeah, I also noticed how he had the three line stanzas throughout the poem, but randomly had the one liner at the end. I think he made the last line only one line to sort of show the importance of the line. Single it out from all of the others so that the readers know that it's more important than all of the others. I don't know, that's just how I saw it. What do you think? I also like how you talked about the sounds that Heaney used in the poem. I didn't really take that into account when I analyzed and I think your take on it was very interesting.
This poem is about his brother, Christopher, who died in a car accident when he was away at college. His brother was 4 years old.
I think that this poem is fantastic. It encompasses some of T.S. Eliot's traits like how he emphasizes time, which parallels Eliot's poem "Rhapsody on a Windy Night." It also shows how he was influenced by Patrick Kavanagh when he uses his families past (his brother's death) as the subject of the poem. It's tragic but also manages to show some beauty in the world, like when he says how the snow falls outside or describes the candle flickering. It gives you this calm sense about his death- almost as though he has come to terms with the fact that he cannot change it and is simply wallowing in it now, but is not angry or anxious like he was in the beginning of the poem when he describes waiting to come home.
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