Compare the Ways by Which Heaney Conveys His Thoughts and Feelings in Mid-Term Break and Death of a Naturalist
Compare The Ways By Which Heaney Conveys His Thoughts And Feelings
Death of a Naturalist & Mid-Term Break
Heaney has many different ways of conveying his thoughts and feelings in these two poems. I feel the first and most obvious is in the titles. Death of a Naturalist is straightaway obviously more dreadful than his other title, any reader upon seeing the word death is shocked. However the title, Mid-Term Break is much more subtle, even though it is the more awful of the two poems, it doesn’t seem that way in the title. However, upon further inspection of the titles, you can appreciate that Death of a Naturalist could have two meanings. The title could either mean the physical death of a person attached to nature, a naturalist, or it could mean the death of a naturalistic personality beheld inside the person in question.
The next comparison I came to was the use of line breaks. In Death of a Naturalist Heaney uses line breaks to maximum effect. In the first line of the first verse, Heaney writes, “All year the flax-dam festered in the heart”. He ends the line on a bit of a cliff-hanger as you don’t know who the heart belongs too and also the word ‘festered’ makes the ‘flax-dam’ sound like a cancer of the heart. Only until you reach the second line are all of these issues resolved. Heaney uses many line breaks in this poem, another one I found had most effect was in the second stanza. Heaney writes, “Then one hot day when fields were rank…” This is automatically changes the tone of the poem, showing the change of heart, the character in the poem, has had towards nature. In the second stanza Heaney continues to use line breaks for almost every line, this means there is a moment of suspense after every line. In Mid-Term Break, Heaney does use line breaks, but not for shock-factor. I feel that in Mid-Term Break the author’s line breaks are used so the reader stops to contemplate about all the emotions in each line. For example in the first line second verse,
Death of a Naturalist & Mid-Term Break
Heaney has many different ways of conveying his thoughts and feelings in these two poems. I feel the first and most obvious is in the titles. Death of a Naturalist is straightaway obviously more dreadful than his other title, any reader upon seeing the word death is shocked. However the title, Mid-Term Break is much more subtle, even though it is the more awful of the two poems, it doesn’t seem that way in the title. However, upon further inspection of the titles, you can appreciate that Death of a Naturalist could have two meanings. The title could either mean the physical death of a person attached to nature, a naturalist, or it could mean the death of a naturalistic personality beheld inside the person in question.
The next comparison I came to was the use of line breaks. In Death of a Naturalist Heaney uses line breaks to maximum effect. In the first line of the first verse, Heaney writes, “All year the flax-dam festered in the heart”. He ends the line on a bit of a cliff-hanger as you don’t know who the heart belongs too and also the word ‘festered’ makes the ‘flax-dam’ sound like a cancer of the heart. Only until you reach the second line are all of these issues resolved. Heaney uses many line breaks in this poem, another one I found had most effect was in the second stanza. Heaney writes, “Then one hot day when fields were rank…” This is automatically changes the tone of the poem, showing the change of heart, the character in the poem, has had towards nature. In the second stanza Heaney continues to use line breaks for almost every line, this means there is a moment of suspense after every line. In Mid-Term Break, Heaney does use line breaks, but not for shock-factor. I feel that in Mid-Term Break the author’s line breaks are used so the reader stops to contemplate about all the emotions in each line. For example in the first line second verse,