FREE ESSAY ON MID-TERM BREAK

MID-TERM BREAK

Mid-Term Break 
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbours drove me home.
In the porch I met my father crying-
5 He had always taken funerals in his stride-
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand
10 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
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
15 With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.
Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple,
20 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.
Mid term break
Commentary 
This is an incredibly sad poem. The mood is set almost immediately in the second line:
Counting bells knelling classes to a close. Notice how Heaney uses assonance and
alliteration to emphasise the funereal sound of the bells and the feeling of time
dragging. The stanza begins with the 'morning' in line one but it is two o'clock in line
three showing that hours have passed in waiting.
The second stanza begins with the image of Heaney's father 'crying'. Having come across
Heaney's father in poems such as Follower in which he appears to be a strong man of few
words, this contrary picture evokes powerful emotion in the reader. Heaney skilfully
takes the reader with him as he enters the house through the porch - we meet his father,
'Big Jim Evans', the baby in its pram, the old men congregated in the room and finally
Heaney's mother coughing out 'angry tearless sighs'.
Lines 14-15 again show Heaney using assonance, this time in his repetition of the short
'a' - 'At', 'ambulance', 'arrived', 'stanched', 'and', 'bandaged' - emphasising the
stopping short of blood and life.
We learn in the sixth stanza that Heaney hadn't seen his brother for six weeks having
been 'Away at school'. The words 'Paler now,' hang at the end of the stanza causing a sad
pause before the sentence continues and describes how little changed in appearance the
boy is in death, the difference being his paler complexion and 'poppy bruise'.
The final line stands out on its own. Almost every word is emphasised so that the reader
must take in the line's message and the shock and deep grief that the family must have
felt. There is an element of shock for the reader reading it for the first time also,
when they discover who has died and that he was a mere four years old.