Mid Term Break Flashcards
Author/Year of Publication
Title Significance
Seamus Heaney / 1966
Mid Term Break
first impression :
sudden break in a term, first impression cheerful usually regarded as a break/time of rest
final impression
sudden break in persona’s family’s lives (metaphorically), contrast to initial impression, solemn/grief-stricken/melancholic
Background
Autobiographical poem.
Based on the death of Heaney’s four-year-old brother (Christopher), hit by a car while playing in neighborhood
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
I → pronoun, persona personal perspective
College → student
All morning → passing of time, readers inquisitive
Sick bay → idea of isolation/distancing, creates tension and worry
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
Knelling → verb, associated with death bells, first introduction to idea of death
At two o’clock our neighbors drove me home.
Neighbors → readers are confused/surprised, usually parents pick their children up, adds to element of curiosity
In the porch I met my father crying—
Enjambment → Shock, loss of words (persona)
Caesura → incomplete sentence, inability to comprehend
Father → strong figure/pillar, embodiment of strength, child looks up to
Father crying → break down of stereotypical image of a father figure
He had always taken funerals in his stride—
Had → past tense, persona had never seen him cry at a funeral, suggests a very tragic occurrence
Funerals → establishes setting, reinforces idea of death Ambiguity, shock, anxiety
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
Polysyndeton → repetition of ‘and’ (conjunction) in close proximity
Cooed and Laughed → Auditory imagery, creates happy images in contrast to solemn and melancholic tone of the poem till now
Baby → symbol of innocence and ignorance, lose our innocence as we become aware of mortality
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand
Persona → Embarrassed
Shake my hand → gesture to comfort, formal action, almost like thrusting persona into adult world/everyone expects him to handle it like an adult
And tell me they were ‘sorry for my trouble’.
Sorry for my trouble → direct speech, formal saying, conveys their inability to comfort the young persona, irresponsible to readers since they are the adults
Away at school, as my mother held my hand
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
Held my hand → extends hand to comfort, aware of her surroundings
Coughed out → as if chokes out of her, conveys tremendous grief
Tearless → Intensity of grief, tears have fried up
Reversal of roles → father (man) crying and showcasing emotions, mother (woman) in control contrast to image of father mourning, shock to child, surprise to readers
At ten o’clock the ambulance arrived
10 o’clock → Sense of time
Ambulance arrived → was not funeral yet, viewing of the body
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.
Corpse → surprising imagery
Stanched → patched up
Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
Morning → Idea of rebirth/renewal with a new day, realization of a changing world where the narrator has no brother.
Snowdrops and candles → touching, innocence/purity
Soothed → Calm and serene image created, contrast to ugliness of death, image attempts to soften blow to death
Him → gender of the deceased, no longer body/corpse
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
Six weeks → Hasn’t met his brother in long, readers feel sympathy
Poppy bruise → Clean impact, seemingly harmless but fatal
