Mid Term Break
"Mid-Term Break"
A death in a family is a very grief stricken and inconsolable experience for anyone to deal with, this is what it could have felt like for Seamus Heaney. "Mid-Term Break" is very sad and emotional. You get the perspective that Seamus Heaney is feeling helpless and also has a feeling of emptiness inside of him. This can be acknowledged by the way he describes his experience of death very well, the main reason to why he gave rise to this poem. Seamus Heaney has used the layout of the poem very carefully as each verse only has three lines except for the last line, which creates an effective combimation.
A poet often uses techniques for particular effect, for instance when Seamus Heaney tries to mislead the readers of the poem with the title "mid term break". From examining this quote we have learned that Seamus Heaney wanted us to think the poem was about a break or holiday from either school or university. The title of the poem is one of the main key factors involved in the poem because the title of a poem is usually what tells us the poem is about without actually looking at the text of the poem. But in this case it is very different because Seamus Heaney wanted to create a sense of mystery and surprise to the poem to give it a little more obscurity. This is one of the key elements to why the poem is effective.
A lead up to an intense emotional experience Seamus Heaney describes is when his classes are coming to an end "counting bells knelling classes to a close". From this quote we learn that Seamus Heaney was at the end of his school day. However the word "knelling" in this quote is very unusual as it is normally used in association with talking about funerals as the bells of a church knell at funerals to tell people that there is a funeral procession in progress, so the local people can pay their respects. The effect this has on the reader of the poem is the feeling that Seamus Heaney is thinking...
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