Essay Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney.

Brother is a considerate character. He is considerate because when he found out that Doodle would live he changed his name from William Armstrong, which was a name that “only sounded

Brother deliberately killed Doodle because in the story it says, “He was ashamed of having an invalid brother.” Brother intentionally showed Doodle his casket because everyone knew he was going to die. Brother wanted to kill Doodle because they went up to the loft and Brother showed Doodle his casket and told

The quantities of pride hidden behind Brother’s “good deeds” would not end successfully. From page 5: “There is within me (and with sadness I have seen it in others) a knot of cruelty borne by the stream of love, much as our blood sometimes bears the seed of our destruction, and at times I was mean to Doodle.” This suggests that Brother knows he can be cruel to his brother, and he knows this relates to his love for Doodle. It also demonstrates how he was mean to Doodle plenty of times. How much could he have loved Doodle to do what he did to him? There is no answer, but one thing is true. It was mean. Very mean. From page 12: “I heard Doodle, who had fallen behind, cry out, ‘Brother, Brother, don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!’ My knowledge that Doodle’s and my plans had come to naught was bitter, and that streak of cruelty within me awakened. I ran as fast as I could, leaving him far behind... Soon I could hear his voice no more” This implies that Brother did indeed have a sense of cruelty, and a very bad one at best. It also shows that his plans to “help” Doodle were only driven by pride and greed. How could someone leave their brother to die only because they could not reach their

The narrator the victim's brother is guilty for the death of William Armstrong also known as Doodle. He is guilty for these reasons, Brother was always horribly rude and vicious to Doodle, the narrator never really cared about Doodle and only cared about himself, and lastly Brother was the one who left Doodle alone in the storm to die.

The narrator regrets how he pushed Doodle far beyond his limits. Now that the Brother is older, he knows how pride can affect him. “I did not know then that pride is a wonderful, terrible thing, a seed that bears two vines, life and death.”(4) When the Brother got Doodle to stand, he was confident in Doodle to accomplish any physical movement. So he expected more and more out of Doodle. But he didn’t know the pain and the danger of trying to exceed the limit of one’s body. Now, after all the years have passed by, the narrator realize that his love for Doodle. “But sometimes (like right now), as I sit in the cool, green-draped parlor, the grindstone begins to turn, and time with all its changes is ground away--and I remember Doodle.”(1) The years have taken away the cruelty and selfishness in the Brother’s early year and he was sorry for how he forced and threatened Doodle. The narrator looks over the cruel moments he had with Doodle and blames Doodle’s death on himself. “They did not know that I did it for myself; that pride, whose slave I was, spoke to me louder than all the other voices, and that Doodle walked only because I was ashamed of having a crippled brother.”(5) The voice here is very regretful of his sins, and wants to fix what he had already

In the text the narrator states ¨It was bad enough having an invalid brother, but having one who possibly was not all there was unbearable, so I began to make plans to kill him by smothering him with a pillow¨ (Hurst, 351). This quote from the text proves the narrator hated his younger brother, and even went so far as to make plans to kill him because he could not stand to have a disabled brother. The narrator even went so far as to say, “The knowledge that Doodle’s and my plans had come to naught was bitter, and that streak of cruelty within me awakened” (Hurst, 360). This textual evidence helps demonstrate the contempt and anger the narrator felt for his brother. This anger, contempt, and shame that the narrator felt for his brother, Doodle, was the reason that the narrator killed his

Like a shovel to dirt as a pen to paper. In “Digging,” Seamus Heaney uses specific elements such as diction, and imagery to convey his meaning that children don’t always want to be like their past generations of men.

When she first begins the poem, the sense of sorrow is present. The author speaks of what her brother has done wrong, but she does so with an attitude that shows she does not care about those actions. She speaks like this until the near end, where she openly expresses her endearment for her brother and sheds a more positive outlook onto him. The last stanza demonstrates that, as a person who has made poor decisions, he was a caring brother until the end. It also shows how, regardless of what others think, she will always view him in her own way.

Brother might not have understood but he did and the result of it is Doodle dying. Some people might say that Brother was innocent of killing Doodle, but he wasn't! Brother was being rather selfish and pushing Doodle around. Also, Brother has never really appreciated Doodle.

He especially turns emotionless towards his dying father. “The officer came up to him and shouted at him to be quiet. But my father did not hear him. He went on calling me.

“Doodle was about the craziest brother a boy could have.” Is Brother guilty or innocent for Doodle’s death? Brother is the old brother of a crippled baby boy named, Doodle. While Brother and Doodle were out in the water, a storm suddenly came and they had to rush home. On the way home, Doodle died, and Brother might be the cause of his death. In James Hurst’s short story, The Scarlet Ibis, Brother is guilty for Doodle’s death because Brother didn’t love him, he was embarrassed of him, and pushed him harder than he should have.

In the book “The Scarlet Ibis”, Brother is portrayed as Selfish, Mean, and Guilty. Doodle, his brother, was born very sick, everyone thought he would die. Doodles parents gave him the name “ William Armstrong” but brother renamed him Doodle because no one will ever expect something great from a boy named Doodle. Brother wanted someone that he could play and have fun with, well when the information given to him that his brother would never be healthy enough to play with him he decides to start a plan to kill him by smothering him with a pillow. Later on in the story Doodle gets old enough to where he can talk and he tells brother to take him outside, when brother takes him outside he takes him to the barn to show

“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.

How much does an artist’s life affect the art they produce? One’s art certainly can be an expression of one’s surroundings and in this manner the surroundings are woven like a thread into their body of work. Seamus Heaney, born and raised in Northern Ireland, has grown up with many strong influences in his life that are visible in his poetry. As Robert Buttel claims in his article on Seamus Heaney “the imprint of this poet’s origins is indelibly fixed in his work” (180). Living in the “bogland” as Heaney has described Northern Ireland left an imprint on his poems, as he often depicts the lush green countryside and pastoral scenes of his youth. However, he also acknowledges his modern society.

This essay will analyse the challenges Seamus Heaney faced during the process of translation and writing, including his own conscious effort to make the play suitable for a modern audience. It will demonstrate how Heaney’s use of language and poetry aided in presenting modern ideas through the timbre of Irish/English diction and idiom in an attempt to make the play more ‘speakable’. Identifying features of Greek theatrical conventions and how Heaney used these to shape his play. Heaney also presents social and political issues through The Burial at Thebes in a way that resonates with a contemporary audience.