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 like a detective putting a jigsaw puzzle together to solve a crime. Also the fact that it is a memory and he is talking about himself as a child shows how badly it would have affected him and his parents emotionally. Through Heaney talks about the reaction of all his family members to his brother’s death, Johnson only talks about how his son’s death affected him.
You can see that since the deceased was his first son, that he is hit emotionally very hard and seems to blame himself, but at the same time consulates himself by thinking that he has gone to a better place. Line 5 ‘O, could I loose all father now. For why.’ seems to indicate that he has lost all hope and does not want any more children in the fear that one of them might be taken away by God again. It also shows that his son was possibly the only bright point in his life and that he feels since he has been taken away, he has almost no reason to live.
After this event he also feels that you shouldn’t get to attached to something as he says ‘As what he loves may never like too much.’ This obviously means that whatever you love, don’t get attached to it, as you will end up losing it.
Clarke, on the other hand, has a more general observation to death and tells it from the sort of view most people might have on war or conflict. Like Heaney’s Mid-Term Break, when you see the title of Clark’s poem you assume that it will be a happy poem about a cute and cuddly mouse. This theory is almost exactly the opposite of what the poem is actually about. You can see that the poem is about the death and destruction in Bosnia War and compares it to the death and destruction that occurs while harvesting.
This poem again is a memory like Mid-Term Break, and at the end it shows her feeling and attitude towards war and violence. You can tell that her feelings are negative since she writes the line ‘my neighbour turned stranger’. This I think means that people you once were good friends with would now become your enemy. So unlike the other 2 poems where it tells that death is a natural occurrence, this poem tells that a person’s main enemy is another person that could possibly be your best friend.
In Johnson’s poem you can tell he is a very religious man by the many references he makes to God and how his son has gone to a better place. On the other hand Heaney tells it as it as it was really happening and Clarke’s poem compares a simple event (hay cutting) with an event on a bigger scale (The Bosnia War), but sees a connection that the rest of us probably would not.
I feel the poem that really explains the situation well is Seamus Heaney’s Mid-Term Break as it keeps the person in suspense over who has died, but delivers a shock at the end when we find out who it really is. This really mixes your emotions and unlike the other 2 makes you feel sorry for a death that happened over 20-30 years ago. I also feel it is better because it focuses on the actually death. while Healey does fill in these criteria.
Clarke’s poem compares the killing of a field mouse to the killings in the Bosnian War. Though this is clever, it does not show the bad things in the Bosnian War as in reality the killing of one field mouse cannot really be literally compared to the massive killings involving the Muslims. The above reasons are why I think overall Seamus Heaney’s poem is the best.