Mid Term Break Analysis
Michael Sikand
Dr. Spencer-Cooke
Period 2
26 February 2015
Mid-Term Break Analysis
I sat all morning in the college sick bay (doctor/nurse of the college)
Counting bells knelling (ringing solemnly) classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home. (They took him home)
In the porch I met my father crying— (His father is distressed
He had always taken funerals (Never walked with pride) in his stride—
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow (hit)
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram (mother has died)
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand (they are feeling sorry for him)
And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'. (he put this in quotes because they were not sincere)
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest, (The strangers don’t know his family)
Away at school, as my mother held my hand (She used to walk with him)
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 his left temple,
He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four-foot box, a foot for every year.
2) The rhyme works well with the poem as it contributes to the flow and it invokes more emotion in the reader to read it in a rhyme. Heaney's detached tone never gives way to heavy grieving, which has the effect of intensifying the heaviness. The poem itself, free verse divided into tercets, increases Heaney's measured emotional response; like the Moirai of the Greeks, Fates who impersonally cut life short, Heaney's triads keep his emotions in check. This poem is powerfully moving because of its emotional restraint and control of tone. Heaney concentrates on observed details and it is the accumulation of these details that helps to make
Dr. Spencer-Cooke
Period 2
26 February 2015
Mid-Term Break Analysis
I sat all morning in the college sick bay (doctor/nurse of the college)
Counting bells knelling (ringing solemnly) classes to a close.
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home. (They took him home)
In the porch I met my father crying— (His father is distressed
He had always taken funerals (Never walked with pride) in his stride—
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow (hit)
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram (mother has died)
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand (they are feeling sorry for him)
And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'. (he put this in quotes because they were not sincere)
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest, (The strangers don’t know his family)
Away at school, as my mother held my hand (She used to walk with him)
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 his left temple,
He lay in the four-foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four-foot box, a foot for every year.
2) The rhyme works well with the poem as it contributes to the flow and it invokes more emotion in the reader to read it in a rhyme. Heaney's detached tone never gives way to heavy grieving, which has the effect of intensifying the heaviness. The poem itself, free verse divided into tercets, increases Heaney's measured emotional response; like the Moirai of the Greeks, Fates who impersonally cut life short, Heaney's triads keep his emotions in check. This poem is powerfully moving because of its emotional restraint and control of tone. Heaney concentrates on observed details and it is the accumulation of these details that helps to make