MID-TERM BREAK BY SEAMUS HEANEY

MID-TERM BREAKBY SEAMUS HEANEYPREPARED BY : SURIN SERRY WONGALYA ISMAHANI MD ZINLING FANG QING

SEAMUS HEANEYBiography of Seamus Heaney

-Seamus Justin Heaney was an Irish poet, playwright, translator and lecturer, -the recipient of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature. -In the early 1960s he became a lecturer in Belfast after attending university there, and began to publish poetry. He lived in Sandymount, Dublin from 1972 until his death. Heaney was a professor at Harvard from 1981 to 1997 and its Poet in Residence from 1988 to 2006. From 1989 to 1994 he was also the Professor of Poetry at Oxford and in 1996 was made a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres.

-Other awards that Heaney received the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (1968), the E. M. Forster Award (1975), the PEN Translation Prize (1985), the Golden Wreath of Poetry (2001), T. S. Eliot Prize (2006) and two Whitbread Prizes (1996 and 1999). In 2012, he was awarded the Lifetime Recognition Award from the Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry. Heaney's literary papers are held by the National Library of Ireland.

-Robert Lowell called him "the most important Irish poet since Yeats" -the academic John Sutherland, have echoed the sentiment that he was "the greatest poet of our age". Robert Pinsky has stated that "with his wonderful gift of eye and ear Heaney has the gift of the story-teller". Upon his death in 2013, The Independent described him as "probably the best-known poet in the world". Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney

I sat all morning in the college sick bayCounting bells knelling classes to a close.At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--He had always taken funerals in his stride--And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.

And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,Away at school, as my mother held my hand

The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pramWhen I came in, and I was embarrassedBy old men standing up to shake my handNext morning I went up into the room. SnowdropsAnd candles soothed the bedside; I saw himFor the first time in six weeks. Paler now,

In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.At ten o'clock the ambulance arrivedWith the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,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. SYNOPSIS

Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney is a poem that centres around the speaker, Heaney and his reflection on the death of his younger brother in the past. His younger brother is run over by a car, forcing Heaney to come home for an early visit from his college. Heaney then returns six weeks later to come home to his four year old brother dead. First stanza

The poem starts out with the speaker at his college campus. We know this because the speaker talks about being in the college sick bay and makes reference to counting bells. Heaney, the speaker uses words like sick and he talks about being driven home, which provides an ominous or sad feeling to the first stanza. By analysing the speakers diction the audience can tell that he is feeling rather sad at this point in time.SECOND STANZA

The second stanza describes the speaker coming home and speaking to his father on the porch. When he arrives his father is crying on the porch. A family friend, Big Jim Evans says it was a hard blow, but this phrase has an ambiguous meaning. The hard blow he speaks of is both metaphorical and literal.THIRD STANZAThe baby is acting normal in the third stanza because it does not understand what has happened. The contrast between the baby and everyone else is that the baby is reacting normally because its lack of understanding while everyone else is sad because of the loss. The adults stand up and treat the speaker with respect by shaking his hand, yet the speaker feels embarrassed at the same time because he still does not understand what has happened.FOURTH STANZA

The old men told the speaker that they were sorry for his trouble because he had to come home from school. The people around are whispering to each other letting each other know that the boy who has just walked into the room was the eldest son who was away at school. His mother was holding his hand to comfort him for what he was about to find out.FIFTH TO EIGHTH STANZAThe fifth stanza is about the injury and return to the house of the young person. This is important because it reveals what the whole poem is centred on. In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs describes the mothers reaction to the death of the child. Heaney refers to the body as a corpse, suggesting the idea that the corpse is no longer a person. The speaker says that The corpse is stanched and bandaged because it is not his younger brother he is seeing but something much more depressing.The shift in time is six weeks ahead from the last time the speaker has seen his younger brother. The speaker says I went up into the room, looking at his brother in doing so. The white flower represents purity, which is found in the young boy. The verse is contrasting with the beginning as in it is much less morbid and depressing, but more accepting. The speaker acknowledges his brother for the first time in the poem. This shows that Heaney was shocked at first, but has now accepted the tragedy.CHARACTER TRAITSThe Speaker's Father: He had always kept his emotions to himself when people close to him have died in the past. When his four year old son died however, he was crying when the speaker was coming home.Jim Evans: Likely a family tried to give support to the family during the time of trouble, he and the neighbours that drove the son home demonstrate that they live in a closely knit community.

The Baby:The speaker's youngest brother, stands in contrast with his laughing to the great sadness of the situation.

The Brother: He was hit by a car at only four years old. His death is tragic because he is so young.

SETTING AND IT'S SIGNIFCANCE

The speaker was at college when heheard the news, not being at home to comfort his family likelygave him a feeling of guilt.SYMBOLS:The coffin: the box the boy comes home in is 4 feet long, a foot for every year of age he had.

The bumper: symbolizes that he was hit by a car

THEME1. Childhood The poem involves the poet recalling an event from his own childhood.It involves the narrator growing up due to the terrible nature of the experience.2. Death / Loss The fact that the poem deals with the death of a child, encourages the reader and narrator to question the pointlessness of death. Focus of the poem is on the reactions of people to death and the way people attempt to make sense of the loss.3. Memory Poem recalls an event from the past and this links it to other poems in the collection that involve looking back in order to see the present and future clearly.LITERARY DEVICES METOPHOR -Metaphor is a figure of speech in which an implied comparison is made between two unlike things that actually have something in common. -Examples for the metaphor is the corpse stanched and candles soothed the bedside.. The candles is use to create the image of sorrow and with the uses of metaphor the writer will create the visual imagery in our mind which is the candles produce a dim light that put the numb situation in that house. PERSONIFICATION

-Personification is a figure of speech in which human characteristics are attributed to an abstract quality, animal, or inanimate objects. -For examples that related to the poem is Counting bells knelling classes to a close, the bells being attributed to human characteristic which is knelling. The word knelling is often associated with death (as with the knelling of a funeral bell) so this adds a morbid tone to the opening of the poem