The only way they do try to console Heaney, and the only time they speak, is when they tell him they were, "sorry for his troubles". This is not going to help Heaney in any way, shape or form. They probably don't care much about his feelings they are most likely acting like they do so they won't seem heartless.
On line eleven Heaney realises that the people in the room are talking about him as he writes, "Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest." This is not going to make the situation any easier, as most people find it awkward when people are talking about them in every day life, but the fact that his little brother has just died will make it all seem ten times worse. I can't relate to this situation but I bet Heaney feels like he wants to cry, this must be torture for him.
In the next two lines we are introduced to Heaney's mother. Our first impression is that she is a very caring and loving mother as she is holding his hand and trying to comfort Heaney. But as we read further into his mother's personality we see that at that point in time she is probably very insecure. Maybe she is holding Heaney's hand as she has just lost one child and she doesn't want to lose another, she is going to hold on to him whatever happens.
This is another contrast, the old men must have made Heaney feel much older by shaking his hand where as his mother is probably making him feel like a small child by holding his hand.
Unlike his father Heaney's mother is not crying, far from it. She is holding back her emotions for Heaney's sake. "And in hers coughed out angry tearless sighs," highlights this fact. His mother must feel like she has take responsibility for Heaney in the absence of his father. But then again, maybe she hasn't come to terms with the death yet and she can't find it in her to cry. Either way I think his mother is helping Heaney a lot by not showing her emotions and just generally being there for him.
When the body of his little brother arrives he does not acknowledge that the body is that of his brothers, instead he refers to it as "the corpse". I think his reasons for this is that he doesn't want to believe that his little brother is dead, and like his mother, he hasn't come to terms with the death. It don't really blame him, if a member of my family died I would be mortified.
However, the next morning and the next stanza are a huge contrast to this. Heaney goes up into "the room" where his little brothers corpse is resting in preparation for the funeral. Although he has had the courage and the self confidence to go up to the room on his own I still don't think he has fully come to terms with the death as he still doesn't use his brothers name (Christopher), he just uses personal pronouns like 'he' or 'him' like before.
The only thing he really notices about the room is the candles and snowdrops around his brother bed. When he says, "candles and snowdrops soothed the bedside" it makes you feel like there is someone there by his brother's bed looking after him. This particular sentence is personification of these two particular object into a kind of mother type figure.
In this stanza there is a reminder of how young the boy actually was when he died. As mentioned before Heaney points out there are snowdrops by his brothers bedside. Snowdrops represent purity because of their whiteness, and as the boy was so young when he lost his life he would not of had a chance to of done anything wrong or evil, his sole would have been totally pure like the flowers whiteness.
In the last line of the stanza he begins to remember what his brother used to look like before the tragic event, "I saw him, for the first time in six weeks, paler now." This also shows he has begun to accept who the corpse is. Within this line there is also proof to show that Heaney hardly ever saw his brother, Heaney most feel bad about this, even though I doubt it is his fault, as he wouldn't of mentioned it otherwise. I'm sure Heaney regrets the fact that he hardly ever got to see his little brother, and i think that he feels responsible for this when it is in no way his fault.
In the next stanza Heaney begins to notice things about his little brother, like the bruise on the side of his head. He describes it as "Poppy" shaped. This is ironic as poppies are the symbol of rememberance and I don't think Heaney will ever forget his little brother.
Also heroin and opium can be derived from the seeds of poppies, these are both very effective pain killers. His brother now feels no pain, no hurt, no suffering as a result of the accident.
Once again on the next line Heaney is remembering his brother when he was alive as he says, "He lay in the four foot box as in his cot." This is also a simile and it also points out again how young he was when he died, as Heaney can remember when his brother was a little child as it was not long ago.
"A four foot box, a foot for every year," is Heaney's closing line. This is a very abrupt ending, just like his brothers. The line breaks the pattern of the three line stanza and throws you off. Heaney has quiet obviously done this for effect and to leave you with something to think about. This line is basically the punch line to the poem as it thrusts into your face how horrific it must be to see a child of that age dead, lying in his coffin. It makes you wonder…
The Early Purges
"I was six when I first saw kittens drown," is the line Heaney chooses to open his poem 'The Early Purges'. This line sets the tone for the next twenty-one lines. For a poem, this is a very bold and simple fact to open with. Its rather like line one of Heaney's 'Mid Term Break', simple and straight to the point, except the first line of 'The Early Purges' has slightly more controversy and drama. From the moment you read these words you can tell that the poem is not going to be a happy one. The one thing that strikes you about both is how he puts no emotion into these lines what so ever.
On line two we are immediately introduced to the main character of this particular poem, Dan Taggart. Our first meeting with Dan is not a very favourable one as it describes how Dan is drowning a litter of kittens. This does not leave us with a good impression and what is more it gives us our first indication that Dan is a rather cold hearted. He seems to have little respect for the kittens, we can tell this from two things. The first is how he describes the kittens, " the scraggy wee shits." This is not a phrase that you would use to describe something that you loved and cared for. The second is the way Dan is drowning the kittens, its says that he "pitched" into the bucket of water. This suggests that he is almost throwing the kittens into the bucket to try and kill them quicker, this does not reflect well on Dan and shows once again that he does not care for the kittens in the least.
On the next two lines Heaney describes the sound that kittens make as they are being drowned as, "A frail metal sound" and "soft paws scraping madly". This makes us think that the kittens are weak and defenceless, and it seems like the kittens are trying with all there mite to get out of the bucket. Yet again, this gives us a bad impression of Dan as it makes him look bad for drowning something as innocent as these little kittens. And when he says, "their tiny din was soon soused" it shows us that the kittens have run out of strength and they have given in.
The first two stanzas are basically about the way Dan is killing the kittens and it almost turns you against Dan, he is portrayed as very cruel.
In the next stanza Dan tries to explain to Heaney that it is better for the kittens to die now when they are young, but I don't think Heaney takes this on at that moment in time. He doesn't see the kittens like Dan does, he doesn't see them as pests that will stop there mother from catching mice and rats, he just sees them as new born cats.
The kittens are described as, "wet gloves" to point out how small the kittens where when they died a bit like the last line of 'Mid Term Break'
Dan has become hardened to this kind of work [the killing of animals] and he doesn't flinch when he has to deal with the dead bodies of the kittens, he just "sluices them out on the dung hill". Sluice is another word for cleaning or to purge, Dan obviously sees the kittens as dirt, nothing more. Also this relates back to the title.
Heaney uses a very peculiar paring of words to describe the dead kittens. "Glossy and dead," strikes you as very odd. This phrase is almost an oxymoron and the two words totally contrast each other. ???
In the next stanza it suddenly hits Heaney what has gone on and he becomes horrified, as he begins to watch the bodies everyday decompose on the dung heap. He has become deeply saddened by the killing of these kittens and I don't think up until now the deaths have actually sunk in. He now compares the bodies of the dead kittens to "old summer dung". This makes you now see the kittens as decomposing bodies rather than actual kittens, Heaney has accepted that the kittens are dead and gone. This stanza of the poem is rather like the section in Mid Term Break when Heaney accept that the corpse is actually his brother. Although the two may not seem similar there are many similarities. For instance, Heaney describes both sets of corpses. "Pale" is used for the description of his little brother and "mealy and crisp", is used for the kittens.
The main difference between the two poems is highlighted in this section. All the way through Mid Term Break, Heaney shows no emotion. However in The Early Purges, he tells the reader how is feeling in most stanzas, "the fear came back", is just one example.
The next stanza is once again giving us a bad impression of Dan, as it basically describes all the 'chores' Dan has to carry out. Quintessentially, this entails killing all the animals that have become useless or are pests to the farm. Once again Heaney finds this horrific. One of the jobs Dan has to do is pull the necks of Hens that can no longer lay eggs, Heaney describes this as a "sickening tug", this is not a very nice metaphor. He uses this to point out the cruelty of this and to show his disgust. Heaney says that he actually "forgot" about the kittens but all of these chores that Dan is doing bring back the memory of the kittens, it makes him saddened ["The fear came back"]. Its like his emotions had been dulled over time, up until Dan begins to kill again.
The last two stanza of the poem, in my opinion, are the most important. This is were Heaney really discovers what reality is like, and he comes around to Dan's way of thinking. The fist line of the fifth stanza shows this, "Living displaces false sentiment." This statement is saying that there is no room for emotion or "sentiment" on a farm.
The line after this is almost like Dan speaking. Heaney describes a set of puppies being drowned, and the only reaction he has to this is to shrug and dispel them as "bloody pups". This is uncannily like something Dan would say or do. Heaney has been transformed from someone who is horrified by animals being killed into to someone who now accepts it as away of life.
We have already seen a great change in Heaney's beliefs up to here but he say something in the next stanza which comes as even more of a shock. He begins to describe how animal cruelty is seen as cruel in the towns and cities of Ireland and you at the start of the poem you would have expected him to agree with them. However, he just says "on well run farms pests have to be kept down. The goes totally against what he was saying at the start of the poem. He is almost repeating what Dan has said to him right from the start, its almost as if Heaney has been indoctrinated from living on a farm. His emotions have now been permanently dulled to the point where he does not care about the animals on the farm, as all he sees them as is away of making money.
I think the reason he says "on well run farms pests have to be kept down," instead of just farms, is that if the pests were not killed the farm would not function properly. These animals do not have to be killed but they do if money is to be made. This is what the people in town do not see, this is why they think killing animals is cruel, because the do not have to make a living out of this.
In the final two verses more change can be seen in Heaney than in the whole of The Early Purges. He has finally grown up and got rid of his childish sentiments and his priorities have changed.
This is very much like the last two verses of Mid Term Break in the fact huge changes can be seen in the way Heaney acts. In Mid Term Break Heaney finally comes to terms with his brothers death, and in The Early Purges he accepts that the animals have to be killed. In his own little way Heaney grows up in each poem.
The moral of The Early purges is, in essence, how ever much you grow attached to something on a farm when it becomes useless it will have to be killed. In some respects this has some parallels in life. I think this is what Heaney is really trying to point out.
