How does Seamus Heaney present his childhood in the poems "Follower" and "Mid-Term Break".

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Matthew Barrett

How does Seamus Heaney present his childhood in the poems “Follower” and “Mid-Term Break”

Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet who wrote the two poems in a similar fashion. Heaney clearly wrote about different aspects and experiences of his childhood. The two poems I have studied are “Follower” and “Mid-Term Break”.

Both of the poems have ironic, interesting titles. The title “Follower” is used to describe Heaney’s unusual relationship with his father. Heaney, as a young boy, grew up around his father, who was always working on their farm. Heaney may have applied the word “Follower” to describe how he used to regard his father as a hero or as someone he could emulate. In the poem he wrote, “I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake” which can be interpreted as to “Follow” in his footsteps.

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The title “Mid-Term Break” is very ironic. The reader is at once tricked into believing that the poem will be about Heaney’s happy memories from his school holidays. This is not so as the poem is actually about how Heaney is going home to the funeral of his brother: A quite sad and dramatic event in his childhood.

“Follower” and “Mid-Term Break” are both about Heaney and his relationship with his family. The poem “Follower” describes his relationship with his father. “Mid-Term Break” is all about the dramatic death of his younger brother during the holiday period.

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The Quality of Written Communication is fine. There is a good level of control exhibited in the forming of the analysis and there is no cause for concern with regard to spelling, punctuation or grammar.

The analysis shown here is indicative of a B grade candidate for GCSE. There is a good approach to language and image analysis, though some comments are vague and could be greatly elaborated on because they feel like they're going to, but never actually go anywhere. For instance - the comments about the childhood naivete of Heaney - why does he do this? what type of writing style has he used and why? These need to be taken into consideration for all language analysis is real depth is to be achieved. The question focus is faint but consistently so. There is a fair mentioning of the overall tone about his childhood throughout, but it is perhaps not quite appropriate to suggest it was all negative. After all, aspiration and admiration and not quite so sour as jealousy and envy. Just be a little careful in your choice of words when concluding your analysis.

This is a fairly insightful essay that comes complete with a couple of interesting analytical points, some of which are perfunctory and others which are slightly more interesting. The language analysis is the most prevalent here, as it to be expected of a Heaney poem, but that isn't to say imagery can't be analysed. Both are given equal consideration here and this balance will be noted and appreciate by examiners. The contextual analysis isn't very strong and is more based on personal guesswork than actual facts so by quite some way there's work to do there in order to ramp up the marks for understanding context. Otherwise this is a competent answer with some good analysis.