Comparison of Mid-Term Break, The Field Mouse and On My First Sonne

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Comparison of Mid-Term Break, The Field Mouse and On My First Sonne

The above poems are written by 3 different people and on reading them they seem to be about very different things. But at heart, they are about death and the pain that appears afterwards. Seamus Heaney's Mid-Term Break is a memory of his four-year-old brother's death. Gillian Clarke's The Field Mouse is about death in a political conflict compared to a death in nature. Finally On My First Sonne by Ben Johnson is about the death of his son and the religious view of the situation.

Both Heaney and Johnson's poems are about the death of a close loved one and how it is dealt with emotionally and in reality. On looking at the title of Heaney's poem, you almost immediately assume that is a happy one, possibly about what he spends his holidays doing. This of course is not the case.

Unlike the other two poems, you do not know immediately who has died or even if there is a death. Throughout the poem he keeps us guessing what is happening. He gives us a clue and we have to piece it together