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Asked by: Rebekka Guy
books and literature poetryWhat elements of Heaney's life are reflected in his poem mid term break?
Seamus Heaney's “Mid-Term Break” argues the paradox of grief: that grief is impossible to articulate and yet people attempt to explain it. The poem uses phrases that call on emotions, a listless first-person narrator, and structural elements to display the theme of death that is so obvious in this poem.
Then, what does the poem mid term break mean?
“Mid-Term Break” describes the aftermath of a tragedy: the speaker's four-year-old brother has been hit by a car and killed. But the poem doesn't spend a lot of time describing the accident or memorializing the dead child. Instead, the poem focuses on the way that other people respond to this tragedy.
Just so, what is the tone of the poem mid term break?
An Emotional Break The poem breaks its tercet pattern at the end: A single line describes his brother's coffin -- "A four-foot box, one foot for every year." This is the single sentence in the work with a degree of mixed emotion in its tone: regret, nostalgia and fatalism.
Seamus Heaney