A comparison of 'Midterm break' and 'The early purges' by Seamus Heaney

She has mixed emotions; she is inconsolable and angry. Heaney only begins to feel comfort the next morning, when he goes to see his brother in his room. Heaney writes ‘snow drops and candles soothed the bed side’, as in his cot’- as if he is asleep in his cot.

The poem is set out in three line stanzas apart from the last line, which is on its own. The last line stands out from the rest of the poem. The first time you are aware of the boy’s age is on the last line where Heaney writes:

“A four foot box, a foot for every year”

This tells us that the boy was only four years old. The parents must be really upset to see their youngest son lying dead in front of them.

The title ‘Midterm Break sounds as if it is about a holiday. However it is about the funeral of Heaney’s little brother. At first Heaney describes his brother as a ‘corpse’, which is a cold unfeeling description of his brother. The boy is referred to as ‘it’ not ‘him’ which is unfeeling and is also cold. In the next verse the boy is referred to as a human again. Heaney says   ‘ I saw him, for the first time in six weeks’. We have an impression that he is finally feeling some comfort when he writes ‘snowdrops and candles soothed the bed side’.

In the sixth stanza snowdrops can be seen as a symbol of his brother who is like a tiny delicate flower. Or it could be a symbol of life and hope after a winter. Heaney uses is personification when he talks about the bruise shaped like a poppy. Poppies are used to remember people that died in the war, calling it a poppy bruise makes it look less ugly.

This poem conveys Heaney's sadness; the poem also makes the reader feel sad, as he is only a little boy. The boy did not deserve to die; this poem makes you feel angry with this.

The next poem we looked at was ‘The Early Purges’ this poem also deals with death. This poem is about when Heaney is six years old and he sees a farmer drowning kittens. The kittens are seen as pests, after drowning them he slings them into a dung heap. Heaney writes of other animals that received a similar fate at Dan’s hands. Then toward the end Heaney shows that he has developed some lack of sentimentality.

Heaney writes this poem to show how he loses sentimentality, as he grows older. He does not necessarily see this as a good thing. Heaney writes ‘it makes sense some animals have to be killed on farms’. But the way in which he describes the death of the kittens shows some sympathetic feelings.

We are made to feel sympathy for the kittens. Heaney coldly describes them as ‘scraggy wee shits’. This is an unpleasant image of the cats being left to rot on the dung heaps. Dan is hard and cruel ‘sure isn’t it better for them now’. Heaney writes in the fourth stanza that he was frightened; this contrasts greatly with dans attitude. Heaney ‘sadly hangs around the yard’ for some time afterwards. Heaney forgets this image but it comes back to him when he sees Dan killing other animals. He appears to have come to term with the farmyard slaughter when he grows up.  Heaney writes ‘it makes sense’, this suggests the same cold-hearted views as Dan taggart. The last line suggests that Heaney realises now that some animals are pests. He still does not forget the unsettling incident when he was younger.

Both poems show how Heaney deals with death. The death of animals as well as his brother affected him. In one poem he is dealing with an accident, a death and also peoples reactions. In this poem he deals with deliberate killing of animals, this is a colder, harder poem and it is also unsentimental.