Compare and contrast the presentation of the reactions to the deaths in Mid-term Break and Out, Out

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Compare and contrast the presentation of the reactions to the deaths in ‘Mid-term Break’ and ‘Out, Out’ ‘Mid-term Break’, was written by Seamus Heaney, an Irish poet, who lost his little brother when he was a young boy, ‘Mid-term Break’ is very similar to another poem called ‘Out, Out’ by Robert Frost, which was written about a boy and was heard about in a newspaper. In the first poem, the boy dies in a car crash but in the second poem the boy dies from shock of having his hand cut off.                                                                                         To tell the tragic stories the poets, use different narrative voices. The poem ‘Mid-term Break’ is written in the first person narrative voice therefore making the reader actually feel the feelings of the people: ‘‘…My mother held my hand in hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs…’’. In the poem ‘Out, Out’, third person narrative voice is used which includes more of a description about the series of events which happens in the poem, an example of this is: ‘‘the buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard’’ Robert Frost includes a lot of detail and information about what goes on within the poem.                                                                                                The poets in both poems set and establish the scene as if the poems were not going to be about death. The atmosphere is calm and peaceful at the start of ‘Out, Out’ because it says at the start:
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‘‘…five mountain ranges one behind the other under the sunset far into Vermont…’’ this explains that it was in a nice place. But in ‘Mid-term Break’ the poet wastes not time and gives us clues about the inevitable, but by the second verse he gets right into the tragedy as it says: ‘‘…I met my father crying…’’ even though in the first paragraph it talks about Seamus Heaney sitting in a college sick bay all morning: ‘‘I sat all morning in the college sick bay…’’.                                        The techniques used in both poems, to establish a mood or atmosphere are: ‘‘the buzz-saw ...

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