Compare Heaney’s Exploration of the Themes of Death in the Poems ‘the Early Purges’ and ‘Midterm Break’

Someone will always die and they will have a funeral, but can you imagine losing someone close to you? How about you brother? In the short story “The Scarlet Ibis” there are many situations when death is among Doodle and his body. James Hurt wrote the story the “Scarlet Ibis” about a boy that was suppose to be a miscarriage and even the doctor said that he would not survive. He lives on with his brother to help him through his adventurous life. The brother is very ashamed that his young brother came to be disabled and he teaches his to walk. All of this James Hurt creates through his writing. Throughout essay there will be multiple ways the author is expression the tone. Through the use of figurative language, imagery, and symbolism, James Hurst creates a Mournful tone in his short story, “The Scarlet Ibis”.

“In the Loop” by Bob Hicok and “Mid-Term Break” by Seamus Heaney are comparable in terms of their symbolic titles, speaker’s perspective, and tragic themes. These two poems diverge only in their physical structure, as neither has rhyme nor meter.

In Midterm Break, Heaney reflects on the memory of his younger brother’s death, and returning home for his funeral. The poem as a whole has an overall

This poignant dichotomy is seen explicitly in two poems in Seamus Heaney’s Field Work. One poem, “The Strand at Lough Beg” is written for “Heaney’s cousin Colum McCartney (ambushed and shot in a sectarian killing)” and is rich with pastoral scenery, dark tones, and religious imagery (Vendler 60). Another poem, “A Postcard from North Antrim” is about “his friend the social worker Sean Armstrong (shot by a ‘pointblank teatime bullet’)” (Vendler 60). These two elegies, both with a strong presence of Heaney’s personal voice, are imbued with a sort of ambiguity as Heaney struggles with the death of two people who were both very close to him. In both poems, Heaney “tries to converse with and question the dead” in an attempt to rationalize, or at least display his sentiments on the untimely deaths (Parker 159). It is interesting to watch Heaney oscillate in imagery, tone and diction as he progresses through both poems. This wavering can be seen as a result of Heaney’s background.

Heaney’s attitude towards death is presented in different perspectives within Funeral Rites. A pun, based on a homonym, embedded within the title itself, suggests one’s right to have a funeral : for there to be an occasion for family and friends to mourn one’s death whilst celebrating their life. In Funeral Rites, Heaney demonstrates the beautiful serenity associated with death, while also highlighting the tragic aspect of death and dying. Funeral Rites is composed of three parts (the first of which I am going to focus on in this essay), with Heaney focusing on different attitudes towards death and dying within each section. For example, in the first section, Heaney concentrates on funerals in the past, as established by use of the past tense. The transition to present tense in the second section is confirmed by the strong adverb ‘Now’, and future tense in the third section highlights the change in customs within the change in time period. With Funeral Rites’ distinct structure, Heaney is indicating his nostalgia for the past, as well as highlighting his outlook on the situation in Ireland.

These two elegies are written by different people that reveal a personal experience and reactions towards loss, death, change, and nature. These themes are prevalent because the speaker wants the reader to acknowledge and understand how human beings can conflict pain on their selves by not changing and letting go of the past. Nonetheless, there are differences between these two elegies by the year it was written. The two elegies are Easter morning by A. R. Ammons and Clearances by Seamus Heaney, and the poem is carefully designed to emphasize on their situation and how their life experiences has refresh the idea of an old theme know in poetry, which are the changes noted in nature, and how difficult it is for human to move on.

“Punishment,” a poem written by Irish author Seamus Heaney, speaks of the discovery of the body of a young bog girl, who as realized later in the poem, was punished for being an “adulteress.” (23) On closer inspection and as the poem shifts from past to present the faith of the bog girl is compared with the faith of another woman in more recent violent times, namely The Troubles in Northern Ireland. In this poem Heaney thus comments, through the use of literary devices such as enjambment, contrast, imagery, metaphors and alliteration and through his diction, on the cruelty of human nature, guilt and on the question of whether we have changed and evolved over time or whether we are still, deep inside, as barbaric and savage

Heaney writes the poem in a chronological order to show how he dealt with the emotional aspect of death as a student. The poem begins with “I sat all morning in the college sick bay” (l. 1) to establish the starting time and provides the approximate age (time) of the student. The use of the word “sick” is a clue that the “break” is not a typical ending to the school term. When someone goes to the nurse’s office during school, it is usually because they are sick. Heaney first uses symbolism with the careful choice of the words “Counting bells knelling classes to

The poet Keats wrote that “the only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s own mind about nothing – to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thought, not a select body”. That this may be an admirable aim for a poet, and especially so for one writing against a background of ethnic violence, is not in doubt. It is, however, extremely difficult to remain neutral when one identifies oneself with an ethnic party involved in conflict. It is my intention, then, in this essay, to document how Seamus Heaney’s reaction to violence in his homeland has affected his writings, with particular reference to the volume of poetry entitled “North”. This volume first appeared in 1975, a year after the

The injustice of death is a theme often explored in the world of poetry; conveyed in a variety of contexts but nevertheless sharing the same theme. Death is universally acknowledged for being a sensitive subject, thus poets writing about death are able to cope with the inevitability and injustice of death through their writing. ‘Mid Term Break’, ‘Futility’, and ‘Tichborne’s elegy’ associates with the injustice of death from signifying the brevity of life itself whilst arguing the inevitable paradox of life. ‘Mid Term Break’ is an autobiographical poem told from Heaney’s personal recount when he is summoned from school, following the tragic event of his 4 year old brother, Christopher. ‘Futility’ is a poem told from the front-line of WWI, when he was a war officer. The poem shares the loss of a fellow soldier but then changes into a more philosophical in tone, as he is questioning the futility and inevitability of death, linking to war and its tragic outcomes. ‘Tichborne’s elegy’ is the most different in comparison to the other two poems. It’s told from the outlook from a religious martyr as he waits for his impending execution for partaking in the Babington plot against Queen Elizabeth I. In this poem, Tichborne simply laments on the brevity of his own life – which links to the brevity of lives discussed on the other two poems. ‘Tichborne’s elegy’ also differs from the other poems as he knew that he would be dead before anyone could read his work. A similarity between all

Poetry is used to describe more than it is used to define. Poetry expresses feeling and emotions more than just a detailed story. Poetry can be used to go deeper into someone’s personal thoughts and emotions. In “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” by William Shakespeare, “The Whipping” by Robert Hayden, and “The Man He Killed” by Thomas Hardy are great examples of how inner emotions can be revealed through poetry. The three selections also give examples of how they follow good poetry.

The wordsmith from Ireland he was named was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, with his poetry achieving great critical acclaim and popularity. The three poems I annotated; ‘Mid-Term Break’, ‘Follower’ and ‘Twice Shy’ are examples of either tradition or events from Northern Ireland. Heaney was deeply influenced by the country lifestyle which alternatively profound expression within his poetry. Heaney was an observant man who analysed and understood the time evolving. As well as obtaining a mastery in the English Language had provided his poetry to be an inspiration to present generations.

“Death of a Naturalist” was concerned with the notion of growing up and loss of innocence. Seamus Heaney describes the childhood experience differently as the child grows and changes perception of ‘nature’ from love to fear. Similarly, in “Digging”, Heaney presents himself as a child who studies through writing, in contrast to his father and his grandfather who dig into the ground. Heaney's father and grandfather use their shovels to work with the land, while Heaney uses his pen to write poetries. It is clear that Heaney is not going to follow his father’s legacy, ‘digging’, he is going to have a different profession.

The poem Mid-Term Break, is an autobiographical work, that speaks of Heaney’s personal experience of when he his four year old brother passed away after getting hit by a car, while he was away at school. In this poem, the letters that Heaney used are the letter S and the letter F. In this poem the letter S was used to create a soothing, relaxing sound to create the tone of serenity. Specifically, Heaney used the letter S in the 6th stanza when he had gone up into his brother’s room and saw him for the first time after he had passed. Heaney described the room as “Snowdrops/ And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him/ For the first time in six weeks” (16-18). The assonance created, helped the reader understand the feelings that Heaney was going through and how everything in the room seemed peaceful and still. On the other hand we see Heaney’s use of the letter F appear again much like in Blackberry-Picking to show Heaney’s frustration of what had happened to his little brother. The reader sees this exclamation of frustration in the last stanza of the poem with Heaney’s final line that states “A four-foot box, a foot for every year” (22). Throughout all of Mid-Term Break, Heaney is almost completely void of emotion, but in his last statement he reveals to the reader how he had to show his emotion. Rather than him just plainly sobbing and

Seamus Heaney portrays his childhood as an unforgettable, fond, and special memory, which can be seen in three different poems: “Digging”, “Churning Day”, and “Blackberry-Picking”. His endless expressions of affection towards childhood symbolises that it was influential and favourable time for him.