I have decided to look at the poems "Mid Term Break" by "Seamus Heaney" and "Out, Out" by "Robert Frost

Authors Avatar

Poetry Coursework

I have decided to look at the poems “Mid Term Break” by “Seamus Heaney” and “Out, Out” by “Robert Frost”. Both of the poems are about the tragic death of a young boy. However, they are written in different ways and both have conflicting viewpoints. “Mid Term Break” is an autobiographical, a personal account of the death of Heany’s younger brother in Derry. While “Out, Out” is set in the idyllic countryside of Vermont, by one of America’s most famous poets. The poem also has a neutral, objective point of view. Robert Frost’s life was filled with tragedy, which may be indicative of his views about death in the poem, which are that Death will happen and we have to get over that fact and continue on our lives.

The titles of both poems,”Mid Term Break” and”Out, Out” are meaningful and essential to the poems. “Mid Term Break” is ironic, as boys at boarding school did not usually get a Mid-tem break, yet Heaney had an unwelcome one. Holidays usually give feelings of happiness but this time it brought only sadness “In the porch I met my father crying”. “Out, Out” was taken from Shakespeare’s play Macbeth. It portrays Frost’s outlook on life and death, which is fragile and easily extinguished.

In “Mid Term Break” there is a continuous three-line stanza layout apart from 1 single line at the end. The poem lacks detail about the accident and instead in focuses on the emotions of the people in the poem. The reader only learns who has died towards the end of the poem. In “Out, Out” has blank verses, it has no rhyme scheme or stanzas, instead it had a steady flow of words like a conversation. This reiterates Frost’s view of death, which is that life will go on no matter what has happened.  Robert Frost’s insensitive viewpoint antagonizes the reader into feeling strong emotions for the boy. Although the two poems are writing differently they do have similarities, as both of them have shocking last line. “Mid Term Breaks” final line “A four foot box, a foot for every year” stands alone from the rest of the poem, it stuns the reader with the age of Heaney’s brother. While in “Out, Out” the last lines is “And they, since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs”. This line is hard for the reader to comprehend the attitude of those who witnessed the accident, which is that we have to accept that death will happen and we should continue on living our own lives, they show no compassion or sorrow for the child who has died they are only worried about themselves. It also causes great shock to the reader, we except that there would be a lot of sadness and mourning because of the death but there is none, they have all accepted that the child has died and are carrying on like nothing major has happened.

Join now!

In “Mid-Term Break” there is a different tone for almost each different stanza. In stanza 1 there is almost a warning tone “At two o’clock out neighbours drove me home” You know something has happened because he is going home early and it is his neighbours driving him home not his parents. In stanza 2 there is a sense of confusion “In the porch I met my father crying” We are confused, as we do not know why his father is crying. In stanza 3 there is a sense of innocence, there is a contrast to the previous stanza ...

This is a preview of the whole essay