Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney. “Mid-Term Break” by poet Seamus Heaney is about a personal experience he had. It deals with issues of life and death in a family and also how different people deal with them. The title suggests at first that the poem is going to be about a vacation, but as you progress through the poem you realize that the title has a much deeper meaning. and a darker meaning... In the first stanza we learn that Seamus Heaney is in a university infirmary waiting to be picked up. You become suspicious when he is picked up by his neighbor, which could indicate something bad has happened. Time passes slowly and Heaney uses alliteration to show this. “Counting the bells ends the lessons. » Already this early in the poem, we feel like something is wrong because of the poet's choice of the word "kneel." Kneeling is the moment when a church bell rings to signify a funeral. The clues become more obvious as you progress through the stanzas and are very effective in arousing your suspicions. When Seamus Heaney arrives home, he is greeted by his father crying on the porch. A stereotypical man would usually hold back his feelings and Heaney uses parentheses to show this. "On the porch I met my father crying---He had always taken the funeral in his stride---And Big Jim Evans saying it was a blow." Obviously something had caused him great pain, and the parentheses are effective in showing that Heaney's father normally suppresses his feelings and comes out strong for everyone, taking things in stride. Meanwhile, in the next verse. "The baby was cooing and laughing and rocking the pram" This excerpt shows that the baby is oblivious to his surroundings and what is happening...... middle of paper ......ld, and was killed in a road accident..."A four foot box, one foot for each year. "The poet emphasizes the fact that his brother was just an innocent child and did not deserve to die at such an early stage of his life. He places this line apart from the rest of the stanzas and it draws your attention to it; making you think about how precious life is, and just when you think you have it all figured out, something happens that makes you question the purpose of life again. We believe that the natural order is that adults die before children and that is why it is such a difficult thing to accept when a child dies in a family. One point I think Heaney was trying to make to the reader is that no matter what tragedies happen in life, ultimately we just have to move on and accept. the past in order to move forward into the future.