Seamus Heaneys Mid Term Break - Book Report/Review Example

The bells have an awful finality as they make the poet painfully aware of the fact that his brother's life has truly come to a close even though it had in truth, barely begun. The opening lines, therefore, serve to draw the reader into the poet's private sorrow and to awaken one to the impact death has on the living. Young Seamus is driven home by his neighbors and on entering he sees his stolid, dependable father in tears, caught in the throes of his pain His mother meanwhile clasped his hand in hers and unlike his father she appeared to have found solace in anger.

Her anger does not allow her to cry, and she can only rail silently at fate for depriving her of her young one. The outward manifestations of her grief according to the poet, are " angry tearless sighs" (Heaney 90). At this point, the poet is curiously detached from his surroundings and functions merely as an observer as he takes in the sorrow of his parents, the baby's happy gurgling and the mindless platitudes of well-meaning neighbors and relatives. The poet stays unmoved when his brother's body is brought home in an ambulance.

He loathes to equate the bandaged body to his brother and refers to it as a 'corpse'. As the night draws to a close, and dawn arrives one gets the feeling that the insurmountable grief of the family has finally begun to ebb. Anger, denial, and tears have finally given way to acceptance which brings with it a measure of comfort, in keeping with the natural order of things. The poet walks into the room that houses the remains of his brother and finds the agitation of the previous day replaced with tranquility.

The change in his disposition is captured in the line, "Snowdrops / And candles soothed the bedside" (Heaney 90). The flowers thus calm his inner turmoil. The poet describes his dead brother's peaceful repose in the final stanzas. His brother is no longer a bandaged corpse but appears to be sleeping. There are no discernible signs of scars or other forms of disfigurement. The automobile that claimed his brother's life has left no outward signs of the terrible injury it has done. These observations serve as an opiate to his misery.

The final line is the most moving, "A four-foot box, a foot for every year" (Heaney 90), the box which refers to the coffin represents the boy's entire life. The small box has effectively captured the brief life of the boy where it will remain ensnared for all eternity, lost forever to the world of the living. Seamus Heaney's Mid - Term Break, thus manages to capture the essence of grief. The poem also draws attention to the fragility of human existence. Finally, it describes the very nature of death and its implications for the living.