'He turned over as if he could be sorry for this
And out of his eyes two great tears rolled, like stones,
And he died.'
The most powerful line in the poem being only three words – three very simple and detached words capturing the final end of the poem. Everything else a preparation and build-up for this moment, the moment being inevitable.
The structure of the poem is strange, in that when looked at the stanzas appear to be four lines, showing promise, but they peter out almost to nothing by the fourth line. This represents the life the child was supposed to have, the promise of his birth and new life ahead, then the fading away to nothing - the promise and the potential; everything dwindles to nothing. Furthermore some of the stanzas have extra lines, some malformed and small representing the shape of the child in physical and mental form.
The bitterness is shown by this as well, the unfairness of it all. This child didn’t have any quality of life; this child died aged one in a mental hospital.
As Silkin narrates this sad tale, a very personal one for him, it is very distanced and cold - devoid of passion and emotion, suggesting that this is some time after the death. However the resentment takes the place of this void - the first word, so impersonal after further reading conveys the dull, sad mocking of his child's life as “somebody”.
The shock of the death has worn away, but even though the shock has worn away the grief, sorrow and anguish has not.
Silkin uses metaphors and euphemisms to describe and discuss his son. He can't name the child, and he can’t talk as if it was a child, and he can't talk as if it were his child. Pain prevents him.
The coldness and distance, implying time after the death, is communicated in such words like 'stone', 'silence' and 'something'. The child is never, throughout the poem, named. Silkin prefers to use pronouns 'I', 'they' and 'he', dancing on the edge of names, feelings and emotions - emotions probably even too difficult and agonising to describe.
A combination of sadness, and thus having to distance himself, and subdued disdain makes the mood of the poem what it is. Sad and painful, but in the end poignant and touching. For Silkin truly believes that this death was a release, and has gained comfort from that.
There is no rhyme in this poem, most likely because it would be ill suited to the theme and damage the significance of the death. Also because it is too painful to have such frivolities. For that same reason and also that Silkin wanted to develop the deformed shape and sound there is no regular metre.
Alliteration in the second last stanza is the most prominent, where the 'st' 'si' 'ss' sounds sound out in the pronunciations, showing the struggling of the son to breathe ‘stopped’, ‘silence’, ‘still’, ‘stopped’, ‘still’ and ‘shrilling’.
Throughout the poem there are religious images. From the child being likened to a house which is, taken in the biblical form, the spirit. The body of the child is a house of the spirit. Then the line 'He did not bless silence / Like bread' - as if to say this is a totally unholy child. Even Silkin describes the child's silence as there being 'Something religious in’ [it].
Then the line 'Red as a wound' reminds the reader of Jesus hanging at the cross, dying, and a huge gash in his side where he was speared with a sword by a Roman.
"Father forgive them" was what Jesus asked before he died, and Silkin's son asks for his father's forgiveness at his death – all these opening parallels between his son’s death and Jesus'.
Silkin leaves important aspects out, like the mother and the name of this child. Perhaps for Silkin this is his way of dealing with his son’s life and death. Naming the child makes him real and actually there – living sadly and dying. The son's mother doesn't appear either, perhaps because Silkin chooses to leave her out to make the poem individual to him, or because the mother has different grief that he could not begin to interpret and express in his poem because it is not his own.
Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney
This poem is different from a number of Heaney's poems, such as 'Death of a Naturalist' and 'Blackberry-Picking'. Aside from the usual shock method that Heaney can use he is more suppressed here - the sadness overpowering his usual style.
However it follows the reality; the real life theme. This is his experience as an older brother to a young 4 year old brother who dies in a car crash. At the time Heaney was at boarding school, and so not present when his brother was hit. From this, more obviously, comes the title 'Mid-Term Break'. It is term time when he goes home for his brother’s funeral, and this is a break in his term, and not only that but also in his life, in his brother’s life (permanently) and in his family’s life.
The first stanza Heaney narrates closely from what happened. He had to sit 'all morning in the college sick bay'. However it doesn't read further on as if he is sick, and sitting in the sick bay is a strange place to put someone, or even downright inappropriate, considering his brother's death. It seems as if no one knows where to put him, and it's an awkward situation.
As Heaney sits there is nothing of what is to come, and no hint is given as to why he is has been left in the college sick bay. Heaney himself appears bored because he counts the bells, as if longing to be “anywhere but here”. Then his neighbours drive him home, and everything seems almost normal, but the reader is left feeling uneasy waiting for something to mark this “almost normal” behaviour.
The first clear sign that something is most definitely wrong is Heaney's father meeting him - crying.
'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.'
Heaney seems to be of some comfort to his father because his father lets him see him crying and he apparently takes 'funerals in his stride' and is ‘Big Jim Evans’ implying that he isn’t the sort of man to cry. So the “wrong thing” is now related to Heaney and his immediate family most probably, and a funeral of a family member, but which one?
Next Heaney receives a welcome from an assumed sibling - 'The baby laughed and rocked the pram / When I came in'. Old men come to shake hands with him, and Heaney feels embarrassed by it.
'…I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand
And tell me they were 'sorry for my trouble'
The next lines are straightforward and obvious, in that what is written is done and said. Heaney writes with no unclear language and unclear meanings. 'Whispers inform strangers that I was the eldest' and again the reader gets the implication of an immediate family member death.
His mother is grief-stricken, and 'coughed out angry tearless sighs', unable to communicate her full grief. 'At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived', and the reader is still in suspense as to who the death is, but trying to conceal it because it seems uncaring and wrong, however suspicion begins to creep in, as mother and father have been ruled out, that this is another sibling, and the embarrassment from the baby’s welcome becomes more understood.
The 'corpse' is brought in, and it is 'stanched and bandaged' - Heaney leaving out no details, in his own individual approach or basic bare facts. As if “telling it like it is” would be easier than explaining personal feelings at the death of this family member, Heaney not even writing as if this was someone he knew. Which could easily be true as Heaney living at boarding school.
Heaney then tells us of his first look at his brother 'in six weeks'.
'…Paler now,
Wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple'
- practically the only descriptions in the poem. Heaney feels the need to inform the reader of this first look at him in six weeks. Strange for him and strange for us – wondering who and how – making our outlooks similar in that respect; both feel unrelated to the scene.
Then the final description:
'He lay in the four foot box as in his cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.'
Heaney again, seemingly emotionless, reciting the appearance – almost free of sentiment, but with Heaney saying ‘He lay in the four foot box as in his cot’ Heaney wishes that it was so and it makes that sentence more than emotionless. Then 'the bumper knocked him clear' comes through sardonic, Heaney appearing bitter about it, and from that we find out the how, and that curiosity is satisfied shamefully.
'No … scars' – no scars because the car that killed him knocked him clear. It becomes clear that Heaney is not as unattached as he so previously gave the impression of. He resents the waste of life, and the unfairness.
'A four foot box, a foot for every year'
This finishes his poem. In that line Heaney conveys the wrongness of it. Emphasising his brother's age, only four. Here the typical Heaney shock comes into play, as we don't expect the death of someone so young, but it is subdued. A small coffin for a small age. It shouldn't happen, and when it does it is particularly sad because those children have not yet led a proper life.
All through this poem Heaney tries to remain unemotionally attached, almost avoiding the grief associated with the death of a close member of kin - even his title echoes that. On a basic level the title’s nothing to do with the death of his brother and yet everything – when the layers are peeled back, it also manages to symbolise the death.
'I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close'
Although still telling us as much as possible - from what he looked like in his death, the strangers trying to relate to him, the times he left school, the time the ambulance appeared, the corpse having been 'stanched and bandaged' - anything to keep his mind from the reality of his brothers death and to be able to separate his emotions from the story which he wishes to give to the reader. The namelessness of the brother supports this inhuman approach, for to give the child a name would make it seem more real. For most of the poem it appears that Heaney - usually the realist, ready to take in anything - is trying to cover up specifics, such as emotion. This hurts and it isn't fair and it is real. Nevertheless by the end emotion creeps in, and Heaney communicates his grief in his angry sarcastic comments.
Heaney’s techniques in the poem vary, from the alliteration that hits you from the first line: 'll', and the structure of the stanzas - three line stanzas, not quite ever making it to a fourth line but joining sometimes to a fourth line in the next verse in enjambment, reflecting the 4 year life of the child; when at the end there is a sort of completion in that the last one line stanza completes the above stanza.
The poem is short, abrupt almost, also reflecting the shortness of his brother's life. The practical short words coming off simply, as if it were being explained to someone young, or being written by someone young, or supporting the unemotional front of the poem, or stating the simplicity of death itself. Also subtle irony is injected into the poem, in addition to the obvious bits - 'Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow' and it was a car blow that killed him.
This poem marks a turning in Heaney’s life, where he grows, but not as he would have wanted. He witnesses 'old men' coming to shake his hand, as their equal, and he is embarrassed by it - he didn’t want this. The shaking/linking of their hands is also given away by the enjambment between the stanzas, the rhyming of 'hand' and 'and' from one stanza to the next and the double use of the word ‘hand’ as the last word of both linked stanzas (stanza three and four).
'…old men standing up to shake my hand
And tell me…
…
…as my mother held my hand'
The alliteration comes again and onomatopoeia at the whispers 'ss': 'whispers', 'strangers', 'eldest'.
Then at his brother's side we have the imagery of snowdrops and candles at his bedside, the snowdrops being irony as they are a symbol of life, and the candles indicative of his brother's life snuffed out before it was ready. The 'poppy bruise' reminding us of Remembrance Day, where others were killed unjustly, and Heaney likens his brother to them in that.
Heaney's message clear - what a waste of life.
Remember by Christina Georgina Rossetti
This poem is Rossetti first asking her lover to remember her, and then her more humble request that he should be happy above all else, whether he should even forget her. It is similar to Dido’s Lament, a musical where before she died she asked ‘remember me’. It is a postscript to Rossetti’s life and although death is never mentioned openly she wants this remembrance after she is dead; in truth she is obsessed with the thought of her death.
Rossetti wrote this poem when she was in love with James Collinson, her love not giving her poetry happiness or hope, but death dominating her thoughts. Rossetti didn’t deal with love that way; instead she turned away from it, or tried. She did not marry Collinson, or her next love Charles Cayley – both mostly for religious reasons, as she was very devout.
She caught a serious illness in 1874 that left her scarred, and then died in 1894 from cancer; having lived the last years of her life as an invalid.
This poem is a sonnet – old-fashioned English style poem that is made up of 10 syllables to a line which makes up an eight line stanza – remembrance – and a six line stanza – it is better to forget and be happy, than remember and be sad. The change of mood between the two stanzas is stressed by that break between stanzas. Also it is set in iambic pentameters
However the first stanza can be further subdivided into four and four lines, shown by the full stops marking them. The first four is Rossetti talking about the finality of death and “going away”, the second about the lover’s relationship that can no longer be after her death (the after-effects of her death).
The poem starts with Rossetti asking her lover to remember her when she is ‘gone away’. The simplicity of the poem is very striking. All Rossetti wants is that – to be remembered after her death
‘Remember me when I am gone away
Gone far away into the silent land;’
The repeating of the ‘gone away/ Gone far away’ and stressing of it using the ‘far’ makes it apparent that this is the irrevocable division – far beyond simple space between people but final and ultimate – death.
Then Rossetti uses the euphemism ‘silent land’ – she cannot bear to mention death plainly, instead using ‘silent land’ as a way of describing her death – going into the silent land. When she is ‘gone away’ he cannot hold her, she cannot change her mind. For Rossetti this is the last separation – the be all and end all. No choice – if she is to go she cannot ‘half turn to go, yet turning stay’. She cannot look back or return after death. The first full stop emphasises the separation of death.
Also the line ‘Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.’ echoes a Greek myth in which Orpheus cannot get his love out of hell because he has to not look at her, which he cannot do.
Another request to be remembered marks the next sentence, Rossetti underlining her fixation, which she does three times in the same stanza. She seems dejected as she talks about a life her lover would have without her; sad for her and sad for him.
‘Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann’d:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.’
Rossetti counsels and prays; keeps the relationship strong, and her lover plans the future for them – their relationship works. But what Rossetti says here is that her lover will have to take care of himself when she is ‘gone away’ – it will be ‘late to counsel then or pray’ – she will be dead, or as she puts it ‘gone away’.
In the next stanza the mood of the poem changes, the first word giving a striking difference; ‘Yet’ – this perhaps, not sure, allowing room, where before Rossetti was certain – about the separation and the request for remembrance – she now is not as definite. Her lover does not have to remember her, and he doesn’t have to ‘grieve’ when he does forget her. She would rather not leave him with this task that would make him sad; her brave face not to be selfish, her love not to be selfish and her love wanting the best for him.
‘Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that I once had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than you should remember and be sad.’
Although its seems to be her real fear to be forgotten she gives her lover the luxury of not having to remember her, almost talking herself and talking her lover out of her one request.
In this stanza comes Rossetti’s only negative thoughts, of grieving, ‘darkness’ and ‘corruption’ and these negative thoughts are marked by the rhyme they share ‘grieve’ and ‘leave’.
Rossetti finishes with her summary – better to forget and be happy than remember and be sad – her selfless love for him.
The structure of this poem, in the rhyming ABBAABBA (first stanza) and CDDECE (second stanza) can show the intermingling of their love and souls, and the fact that death is only separation physically not by memory; it cannot die mentally.
Also subtle punctuation can be relevant in Rossetti’s poem – the semi colon and colon in the first stanza both appear when the rhyme is BB, a kind of link from one line to the next – although death separates them it can also go beyond death.
For Rossetti her love means that although her great fear is that she will forgotten by her lover, perhaps if he gets another lover, all she truly wants is his happiness. This is a truly selfless act, and one that is a part of the Christian belief, for Rossetti was very pious.
Also this poem is a way for Rossetti to be remembered forever not just by her lover, for even if he forgets, a great many people will read and reread her poem – catching this moment in time; making it last forever. So this is a way of assuaging her phobia.
Rossetti’s request at the end can also be seen as not only selfless but also fulfilling a wish that her memory will not change ‘For if the darkness and corruption leave/ A vestige of the thoughts that I once had’ – the ‘corruption’ being the changing of her memory which is worse than to be forgotten.
Also, in the structure of the poem, the word forget is directly over the word remember in the line above – linking the two words, the opposites of each other
The end of Rossetti’s poem is her blessing. It ends with melancholy rather than misery
Rossetti may be careful never to mention death by name because of the painfulness of it, instead using euphemisms. Or because this is her departure which she knows is imminent (Rossetti did leave him).
In real life Rossetti never married – her fear to be forgotten after death sort of came true, after life disfigured and living as an invalid she must have been lonely as she rarely left her house, although she continued to write – her comfort.
Comparison and contrast of ‘Death of a Son’ (Silkin), ‘Mid-Term Break’ (Heaney) and ‘Remember’ (Rossetti).
The first two poems (Mid-Term Break and Death of Son) are very similar in most respects, but Rossetti’s ‘Remember’ is different in many ways.
The first most obvious similarity between the first two poems is the story – the death of a family member, although one is the death of a son and the other the death of a brother. Based on this, both would most likely have had very different reactions. In addition Silkin has the understanding of an adult, while Heaney is still, in truth, a child as well. Both poems mark decisive moments in their lives.
Heaney, being younger at the time of the death, has family members involved in his poem – his father, his mother and another sibling. Silkin doesn’t have anyone except himself in the poem, implying isolation and seclusion experienced at the death. His wife not at all involved in the poem, even though it would have been an equal loss for the both of them. Oddly enough Silkin and his wife divorced some time after – perhaps they weren’t close. However even though that Heaney does have the ‘supports’ of family he doesn’t use them, or doesn’t benefit from them. Both poets come out alone with their thoughts and feelings. They both distance themselves from the grief in different ways.
In Silkin's poem he is present at the death, while Heaney is not. This makes the narrative very different; Heaney's almost being suspensive to find out who died, and Silkin's overwhelming sadness. Silkin's has the communication exchanged between father and son before the death, making the death of the son very personal and ‘special’. Heaney’s death of his brother has already happened and when we enter into the story we are left guessing, hanging on Heaney’s words looking for clues. Heaney knows everything, but we don’t. Silkin, however, tells us all he knows, all the factors in the equation.
Time comes into both poems – time in that both have gotten used to the death. Silkin has gotten used to it because he wrote the poem sometime after the actual death, shown by words such as ‘stone’ and ‘silence’, so the shock has gone, leaving only dull pain. Heaney, not having been there at the death has obtained the knowledge that his brother has died, and is accepting of what has happened.
Yet Heaney’s narrative is telling a story simply, from where he went, what happened and what was said, and creeping in some personal feelings. Silkin’s has him present at the death, but yet at a distance and not told as ‘this happened, then this’ but descriptions and comparisons; things at hand at the death that were running through his mind; not the mundane details of a repetitive story
Silkin’s poem is heavy on the religious imagery, and Heaney also has a small insert into that. He has seven stanzas (plus a one line additional stanza), echoing the seven days it took God at creation, bringing in yet another mockery. Silkin's language is also more difficult than Heaney’s, Heaney’s being very simple, plain and sometimes brusque.
However Rossetti talks about her own death, which is not actually included in the poem. Heaney’s and Silkin’s is about the death of a relative. The only link between ‘Remember’ and ‘Death of a Son’ and ‘Mid-Term Break’ is the theme of death. Rossetti’s theme of death comes from her obsession of death when she was in love; almost as if she knew her love was doomed, that she could never fully commit to her love.
In Heaney’s and Silkin’s love is not very prominent in the poem – no love in Silkin’s for his wife and it is arguable as to whether he truly loves his retarded son. In Heaney’s he barely mentions love at all, blocking out those difficult emotions. Rossetti’s is mainly motivated by her love and so in those senses they are different – Heaney’s motivation for his poem coming from his feelings of grievance and unfairness, similar to that of Silkin’s.
Similarities can be found between Silkin’s and Rossetti’s in that both cannot mention death by name – using euphemisms and metaphors as a way around this pain.
The most obvious difference Rossetti has with Silkin and Heaney is that she is female and the others are both male. It is perhaps her female stature that makes her able to think of her lover, including him in her poem in a most noble way, giving his feelings thought, whereas in Silkin’s and Heaney’s they are alone and do not share their grieve, almost selfishly; never giving anyone else thought. At the end of Rossetti’s she is able to give her “blessing”, in contrast to the other two where it could be said they “wallow in their misery”.
Heaney’s and Silkin’s poems seem to be more “stuck in the past” than Rossetti’s. Heaney’s especially as he wrote ‘Mid-Term Break’ as an adult from when he was a child, and Silkin’s as his was written some time after the death, until the pain had lost its edge.
She is looking ahead, far ahead; her thoughts stuck in the future when she was in love. Her poem is written when she was healthy, the only prompt to write her poem is the fact that she was in love, making her thoughts and this poem almost a denial of love.
The first two poets’ messages are clear – a waste of life. The unfairness, it shouldn’t happen; it’s debatably the saddest type of death. The potential and promise of life taken swiftly away, before it’s appreciated. Both poets take the death hard, and begrudge the squander of life involved in the sad deaths in their lives. They try to get across how life is precious. Rossetti’s is above all else be happy, rather then sad; her wish above her own uncertainties and anxieties. Her poem is an example of ultimate unselfishness.