In ‘Mid-term Break the theme is not set straight away, it begins with Heaney sitting in the sick bay waiting to be taken home, but in the first stanza the reader does not yet know why. I get the impression that Heaney is bored and a little agitated because he is “counting bells”, this slows the poem down. He must have been waiting there a long time if he was counting the clock, maybe he did this to take his mind of something, this makes us question why he is there. In this poem Heaney is growing up and starting to learn the facts of life, in the poem the element of growing up is, he is having to deal with different things as he is growing older. We can tell by reading the poem that Heaney was still very young and that he was a bit shocked by everything that had happened. “When I came in, and I was embarrassed.” “Old men standing up” and shaking his hand. Here Heaney is wondering why everyone is apologising to him for his trouble, he cant understand why they are saying this and why everyone is acting in such an abnormal way, this is because he had never experienced something like this before. (death)
The poem ‘The Early Purges’ I think is an interesting poem, and I believe that Heaney witnessing such disturbing deaths of animals as a child, must have effected him as an adult, and how he sees things when he is all grown up. On the farm Dan says that the kittens have no value, by calling them “scraggy wee shits” and then Heaney does the same but he is older and now an adult, he even swears like Dan, “bloody pups.” This is proof, that being brought up on a farm has effected him in the way he sees killings on the animals. We would probably agree that it is not right and it is cruel, but Heaney has been bought up to think that it is just part of their daily lives, and it has to be done. We can tell this is true when Heaney says “I just shrug, ‘Bloody pups’ ” we can tell that he isn’t showing any sympathy just like Dan didn’t.
When Heaney was young and in his childhood years he wanted t follow in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps of being farmers, and being the oldest child he was probably expected to. As the years past Heaney found a passion for writing, no longer did he want to be a farmer but he wanted to become a poet. I think Heaney wrote ‘Digging’ as a sign of respect towards his father, he wants his father to understand although he is not a farmer he admires him dearly and is extremely proud of what he did. Heaney feels that he cannot match “men like them” with a spade, and it is his duty to become a writer. I get the impression Heaney feels almost guilty for this change especially when he says “my father digging, I look down” maybe Heaney feels as though his father thinks his son has betrayed him, by not choosing to become a farmer just like himself and his father. At the end of this poem Heaney says, “The squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it.” This quote is aimed towards Heaney’s father its another way of saying “I am not going to let you down dad, I will use my pen to dig up my past and make you proud.”
The three poems ‘Digging’, ‘The Early Purges’ and ‘Mid-term Break’ are all linked with nature because they all include it. In ‘Digging’ and ‘The Early Purges’ the nature is about the farm, and in ‘Mid-term Break’ the nature is about Heaney’s brother’s (Christopher’s) death.
The language the poet uses in his poems is very simple and a little colloquial, especially ‘Digging.’ I noticed that in many of the poems the poet uses onomatopoeia, this is very obvious in “rasping, gravely, sloppily, squelch and slap” from the poem ‘Digging’. The onomatopoeia in ‘The Early Purges’ is “sickening tug” I think the poet used these words to emphasise what he is trying to show. E.g. “a clean rasping sound” we can tell the soil is dry and stony because it makes a rasping sound against the spade, and the soil is not wet and sticking to it to make it dirty that is why it is clean.
In ‘Mid-term Break’ in the fifth stanza the poet refers to the child’s body as “the corpse” and not a person. Towards the end of the poem when Heaney is alone and able to act natural and be himself he uses person pronouns opposed to the corpse. E.g. “wearing a poppy bruise” this is a metaphor, Heaney sees the bruise as if the boy is wearing it and that it is not actually part of the body. The bruise is linked to a flower (“poppy”) and flowers are a symbol in the poem, a symbol of new life after death. The last line: “A four foot box, a foot for every year” this is the only line that rhymes throughout the whole poem, I think this is because the poet wanted it to stand out more. This line tells us that a foot of the box indicates one year of the boy’s life.
While reading all three of the poems one thing that came to my attention was one oxymoron out of all the three texts. The oxymoron was from ‘The Early Purges’, “glossy and dead” used to describe the kittens laying on top of the dunghill. In the poem ‘The Early Purges’ the text starts with honest and direct language, but it is later replaced with two clichés: “cuts ice” and “pests have to be kept down.”
The structure of the poem in ‘Mid-term Break’ is important, it begins with Heaney waiting to be collected from the sickbay. The final sentence is the only one with a rhyme, it sets the tone of the poem, makes it stand out more and has a greater effect on the reader. In ‘The Early Purges’ there are tight and regular rhymed three-lined stanzas very similar to ‘Mid-term Break’. In ‘Digging’ the number of lines varies, but in each word there are only one or two syllables making it even easier for the reader to understand.
Overall, there are many similarites between all three of the poems. This is due to them all being written by the same poet and focusing mainly on three things: childhood, family and farm life. ‘The Early Prurges’ and ‘Mid-term Break’ are linked with childhood, ‘Digging’ and ‘The Early Purges’ are linked with farm life and ‘Digging’ and ‘Mid-term Break’ are linked together with family. I think Heaney feels these three aspects are the very important to him that is why most of his poems focus on them.