In the opening paragraphs of each poem, there is a contrast of feelings as each of the poets thinks back to memories of how each experienced school. Carol Ann Duffy describes how the teacher Mrs Tilscher is able to engage the children with Geography, for example, “chanted the scenery, Tana, Ethopia, Khartoum, Aswan. That for an hour,….”. This shows the effect that Mrs Tilscher had as a teacher, that Carol Ann Duffy was able to sit in a classroom and listen for one hour. In contrast to Duffy’s opening memories, Heaney’s first lines are filled with anxiety as he sits “all morning in the college sick bay, Counting bells knelling classes to a close”. Heaney uses alliteration here to emphasise the idea of a funeral.
Duffy states in her poem how she is able to sit in a classroom enthralled by her teacher, while Heaney speaks of the dread he felt at sitting waiting until the afternoon “At two o’clock our neighbours drove me home”. In the first paragraph of Duffy’s poem, she describes “The laugh of a bell”, in contrast to how Heaney felt as he described the “the bells knelling classes to a close”.
Carol Ann Duffy’s poem “In Mrs Tilscher’s Class” explores her childhood memories as she reflects on the time spent in a particular class at school. Her memories are mostly happy. She remembers school as “better than home”. It is mainly a positive poem, uplifting the reader, sharing mutual events familiar not only to school aged children but also to a wider audience of varying ages. Not all Duffy’s memories were happy however, as she does briefly mention “Brady and Hindley faded like the faint uneasy smudge of a mistake” but doesn’t dwell on it as she quickly moves onto how she felt a sense of security and love for her teacher, Mrs Tilscher. Gold stars were a treat for working hard and Mrs Tilscher often left these as surprises. Duffy comments on how she felt at receiving one, “Mrs Tilscher loved you”. She comments on the efforts made by Mrs Tilscher to make the classroom an appealing place, “The classroom glowed like a sweetshop”.
In contrast to Duffy’s mainly happy memories, Heaney describes how as a young boy, he saw his father crying, unable to cope with the death of his younger four year old brother, when previously his father “had always taken funerals in his stride-“. He speaks of how the neighbour, Jim Evans said the death of the little boy had been “a hard blow” to the family. This is a typical Northern Irish phrase as sometimes when people are going through a hard time, they talk of life dealing them a hard blow. In the midst of everything going on, Heaney is still able to notice the “baby cooed and laughed”, which shows how observant he must have been. Heaney comments on how he felt “embarrassed by old men standing up to shake my hand and tell me they were “sorry for my trouble” ”. In a way he was forced by this tragedy into growing up by the respect these old men were showing him because “I was the eldest”. Heaney’s childhood appears to be coming to an end in the sense of the impact caused by his younger brother’s death, yet we can still sense his childhood as he talks of “my mother held my hand in hers”.
Both poets use the theme of time in each of their poems. Heaney talks of “At ten o’clock the ambulance arrived” while Duffy in her poem refers to “Over the Easter term” as she remembers the “inky tadpoles changed from commas into exclamation marks”. Duffy also speaks of time as she leaves Primary school and leaves her childhood behind, “Reports were handed out”.
Heaney refers to his brother as a “corpse”, suggesting that he feels detached from his younger brother now dead. It is too upsetting for Heaney to refer to his brother as anything other than a “corpse”. Heaney is having first hand experience of death, while Duffy in her poem has a passing memory of death caused by Brady and Hindley in the sixties. Heaney uses alliteration “snowdrops and candles soothed the bedside” to create an atmosphere of peace by using the word soothed, while snowdrops represent hope.
The use of personification is used by Heaney as he comments on “wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple”. Poppies are used to remember those who have died and Heaney is remembering how his brother looked when he died. He uses metaphor to describe his brother as he “lay in the four foot box as in his cot”. Heaney would have remembered seeing his brother sleeping in a cot and he refers to the coffin as being a cot. For Heaney his brother had “No gaudy scars” and he sees him looking as he would have remembered him when he was alive but now he is dead.
The last line “A four foot box, a foot for every year” stands alone in this poem. Heaney uses monosyllables to let the reader feel the pain he is going through at the death of his four year old brother. We can feel Heaney’s shock at the unexpected death of his young brother.
Heaney’s childhood came to an end with the abrupt and untimely death of his brother. In contrast Duffy’s childhood was brought to an end by the remarks of “A rough boy told you how you were born”. This was taking place while Duffy was looking at the growth of tadpoles in the classroom, which would have been her only experience of change and growth until that stage. She describes show she “stared at your parents, appalled”. Sexual awareness and growing up is a favourite topic of Duffy’s. She continues this theme in the last verse of her poem. She compares the weather at the end of the school year to the changing feelings she is experiencing as she enters adolescence. “That feverish July”, the references she makes to experiences herself as she becomes more aware of her changing emotions, “A tangible alarm made you always untidy, hot, fractious under the heavy, sexy sky”. Duffy is looking for an adult to explain things to her and reassure her of these changes taking place inside her but “Mrs Tilscher smiled, then turned away”.
Duffy uses metaphor to describe the feelings and bodily changes she is going through. She refers to the “sky split open into a thunderstorm”, to describe how she feels inside.
Both of these poems are describing how each poet felt as their childhood eras came to an end, Heaney’s by the death of his brother and Duffy’s by her introduction into the adult world of sexual awareness.
To conclude, both poems are about life and death and what’s in between. Growing up is a main topic but each poet has their individual experiences of life. I preferred “In Mrs. Tilchser’s Class” because at various points throughout the poem I had mutual memories such as the long pole used to open the windows as well as receiving a gold star from time to time. There were a few parts I found humorous also for example whenever the boy explained to Carol Ann Duffy “how you were born”. “Mid-term Break” was at times a bit hard to understand where the poet was coming from. Nevertheless I felt extremely sympathetic towards Seamus Heaney because of what he had to experience at such a young age.
