"Mid-Term Break" Plog #3

Mid-term Break

I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close,
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.

In the porch I met my father crying--
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

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
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 the left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in a cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.

A four foot box, a foot for every year.

Commentary:

In the poem “Mid-term Break,” Seamus Heaney creates a blank tone to promote the theme that sudden loss causes shock and makes people act differently. The speaker, a college student, returns home for a break to attend the funeral of his 4 year old brother. He experiences the ultimate, untimely loss of a family member, and his observation of the many emotional responses to that loss emphasizes the strange reality of a world that doesn’t contain a loved one.
The speaker notices the emotions of others, but he seems to simply observe, because he lacks the typical emotions caused by the loss of a family member. The title of the poem, and the first stanza, imply that the “break” is a vacation. Usually students are very impatient when they are about to leave school for home, and the speaker exhibits this behavior as he waits “all morning” to be picked up, “counting bells” and keeping close track of the time. Heaney then surprises us with the fact that the speaker actually has a “break” to attend a funeral. The young man sees his father cry uncharacteristically, but he shows no sign of the same level of sadness. He feels embarrassed instead, as old men offer their condolences. Instead of feeling the sadness and depression normally caused by death, he registers the reactions of others; I picture him staring blankly ahead. He barely does any action; his mother “held my hand in hers,” because the boy is too shocked to reach out. Both parents already experience grief, but the son merely observes them. The father cries and the mother “coughed out angry tearless sighs.”
The speaker’s analysis of his brother’s body shows distance and more observation, which continues to contribute to the blank tone. The young man once again notices details such as the time when the ambulance with his brother’s body arrives. He calls the body a “corpse” which demonstrates an emotional detachment from the body. The mood changes as the speaker walks into the calm, “soothing” room; the brother starts to feel the overwhelming sadness, but he continues to study the corpse. He observes that the little boy is “paler now,” and the “now” shows the sudden realization that the boy is dead, that now is different from the boy he saw six weeks ago. He sees the little boy in his coffin, but remembers the boy laying sleeping in the same room very recently. He studies the body, noticing the “poppy bruise” and lack of “gaudy scars.” Until the speaker walks into the room, he doesn’t feel the full extent of the loss of his brother. He walks around blankly, in shock, until the realization that his 4 year old brother will never again to run around in the street, full of liveliness.
The speaker’s blank tone and calm observance of his brother’s funeral represents the effect of sudden loss on people. He remains in shock until the last line, “A four-foot box, a foot for every year.” This is the precise moment when the speaker realizes that this little boy is never coming back.