Heaney, Seamus: 1939 - 2013
Poems - Explanations
- Explanations for:
- "Mid-Term Break" is an autobiographical poem in first person narrative, which allows the reader to share his feelings. Heaney was in boarding school in Derry when his younger brother, Christopher, was killed. (We are never told Christopher's name) The title "Mid-Term Break" has a double meaning – the boys didn't get Mid-Term breaks but Heaney got one unexpectedly. The title is slightly ironic and misleading.
This poem is of a traditional Irish wake and is kept realistic by using phrases that we use at wakes. "Sorry for your troubles" There is a strict stanza layout, which was done intentionally, except the last line – it stands alone as it has most emotion and is where the poem reaches its climax, though nothing happens. Words and phrases have been used to suit the era it was written such as "sick bay" and "knelling".
When Heaney arrived home from boarding school he met his father in the porch "crying". This was probably a great shock to him as he I imagine he would have never seen him crying before. Realism is kept in the poem by mentioning names in the poem. "Big Jim Evans" The baby, who obviously didn't know what was wrong "cooed and laughed" at the sight of its brother. Heaney was uncomfortable at suddenly being treated like an adult. "I was embarrassed by old men standing up to shake my hand" His mother is introduced in the forth verse. She held the young Heaney's hand for fear she might lose another child. She "coughed out angry tearless sighs" that may have been because she was all cried out and tears left or because she had still not came to terms with what had happened and could not grieve.
The body was taken home at 10pm. Here Heaney calls the body of his brother a "corpse" which is callous and unfeeling. Heaney didn't go to see the child until the "next morning". There are numerous reasons for this; perhaps he had been too busy, his parents may have told him to wait or possibly it was because he couldn't face it. The image of snowdrops and candles at the bedside is a comforting one. Heaney says they "soothed the bedside" giving them personification.
The last four lines are most moving in my opinion. The child "lay in a four foot box as in his cot"; the word "cot" makes us think of a baby, though it is what his bed would have been called. He had "no gaudy scars" which makes us wonder if Heaney had thought he would have been cut and scared.
The last line stands alone and has a powerful effect; it is where we learn the child's age, "a four foot box, a foot for every year."
Gerard Higgins - Sootfalls are from the "olden days" when houses were heated by wood and especially coal fires. If chimneys weren't swept regularly the soot would accumulate and sometimes fall in quantities down the chimney, it was characterised by being black and falling softly, almost silently.
- Tollund, Grauballe and Nebelgard are place names in Jutland, Denmark, where bog corpses have been found.