Mid-Term Break Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney Mid-Term Break The main theme of Mid-Term Break is the tragedy of the death of a teenaged child, whose life breaks when he is altogether four historic period old this tragedy also breaks the lives of differents, specifically the childs parents and brother. The tone of the poesy is very sombre, as it explores the manifold ways in which lives are tough and shattered by death. In literal terms, the title refers to the Mid-term Break of a school vacation in this sense it is highly ironic, as the holiday the poems narrator gets from school after six weeks of classes is not for a vacation, that for a funeral.However, as indicated in reference to the theme, break has other meanings relating to the mortified life of the dead child and to the broken life of those close to him. Additionally, Mid-Term can be read not just as referring to a school holiday, but to a term of life thus the childs life has been broken prematurely, in mid-term. So while on a literal direct the title refers to a school vacation, on a metaphoric level it refers to a life which has been broken before its natural span.Though the poem is set show up in even three-lined verses, except for the anomalous last line, it is actually structured around three geographic locales, locales which are also distinguished from each other in temporal terms the college, location of the first verse, in which the narrator remains all morning until two oclock, the narrators house, in general the front porch and front room, where the narrator remains until ten oclock at night when the dead body is brought home and, finally, the upstairs room where the corpse is move out, which the narrator visits the Next morning. The movement is one from the exterior world of school and non-familial acquaintances, to the interior world of the house, friends and family, and finally to the upstairs room where the narrator stands unsocial with the body of his brother. This movement can reflect the way in which d eath isolates us and sets us unconnected as the narrator is increasingly isolated, finally left alone with the corpse, so death separates us from normal human interactions and leaves us alone to confront our mortality. This sense of increasing alienation from the world of normative human domain is marked throughout the poem.The first people the narrator refers to, in the first verse of the poem, are the neighbours who drove him home however, once at home, he is abash to find his father crying, an action which the narrator regards as disturbingly abnormal for a man who had always taken funerals in his stride. The babys actions in cooing and laughing and rocking the pram also disturb the narrator, as he clearly finds them incongruous he is further embarrassed/By old men standing up to shake his hand//And tell him they were sorry for his trouble. Alienation is increased as the narrator now uses personification to stool a sense of disembodiment Whispers informed strangers I was th e eldest he is further distressed by his mothers reaction, as she coughed out angry tearless sighs. Here, the unusual collocation of coughed and sighs works to create a sense of disturbance and discord it is almost as if the mothers actions make no logical sense.Finally, the narrator feels alienated even from his young brother it is not his brother who is brought home at night but a corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses. Thus the narrator feels increasingly set apart from the world around him, even distanced from the body of his brother, profoundly alienated and intensely self-conscious of his own alienation. This self-consciousness, finally, is emphasised by the extensive use of the subject pronoun I, the goal pronoun me and the possessive determiner my in the first six verses of the poem.The narrator declares I sat all morning our neighbours drove me I met my father I came in, and I was embarrassed to shake my hand tell me they were sorry for my trouble I was the eldest m y mother held my hand I went up into the room This extensive self-reference is only abandoned in the last few lines of the poem, when the narrator finally looks at the body of his brother, him, as Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,/He lay in the four foot box as in his cot. the bumper knocked him clear. From a state of almost morbid self-awareness, therefore, the narrator is brought into a reflectivity of his brothers body, a contemplation that leads him to reflect not just upon the subjective embarrassment he feels, but upon the objective tragedy of his brothers death.