Seamus Heaney has Vivid Memories of his Childhood. Analyse Two Poems That Reflect Heaney's Childhood Memories. Refer to the Poems In Detail and Use Quotes to Illustrate Your Points.

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Seamus Heaney has Vivid Memories of his Childhood. Analyse Two Poems That Reflect Heaney’s Childhood Memories. Refer to the Poems In Detail and Use Quotes to Illustrate Your Points.

Seamus Heaney is an established Irish poet who was born on April 13th 1939. He was the oldest of nine children and was brought up on a remote farm in County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. He has a lot of typically Irish memories which he includes in his poems. The three main memories that he brings up in the two poems ‘Mid-Term Break and ‘Follower’ are the death of his brother Christopher, farm life and breaking the family tradition. At 18, Heaney left his small village to pursue his English career, unaware of just how talented a poet he was. It wasn’t until he attended Queens College to study a degree in English and got involved with a group of poets, known as ‘the Group’. He graduated in 1961 and then went on to earn his teachers certificate at St. Josephs College in Belfast.

His first poems that were published was in 1965. They were a short collection of eleven poems, conveniently called ‘Eleven Poems’. Since then, Heaney has published over 14 anthologies which have won many prizes and awards.

Seamus Heaney writes about his childhood memories in a number of poems. However, the two poems I have chosen to analyse are ‘Mid-Term Break’ and ‘Follower’.

The first poem I have chosen to analyse is Mid-Term Break. This is about Heaneys memory of losing his brother, Christopher by a car accident. Before reading the poem, the title ‘Mid-Term Break’ would suggest the feeling of happiness, and creates the idea of relaxation and calmness. As you begin to read the poem, you realise that Heaney was being bitterly ironic.

The poem itself is about Heaney losing a loved one, by being run over by a car, who we believe to be his brother, Christopher. It goes into so much detail, that each scene leaves a vivid picture in your mind. Heaney is able to do this by not showing any emotion at all from himself, but from other people’s reactions to the circumstances. Heaney actually wrote this poem 13 years after the incident, so it is clear this has deeply affected him emotionally.

There are many people in ‘Mid-Term Break’. Each of these people is significant. Heaney is the most important, because the poem is describing his memory. However, because Heaney is writing as an observational poet, without the other characters emotions, the poem would be bland and without feeling.

In the first stanza, you find out that it is written in the first person narrative and the persona is most likely to be Heaney himself. It begins in the college sick bay, where Heaney has been waiting all morning, not knowing why. At this point, Heaney could be feeling bored, isolated and lonely. It would give him time to analyse the situation, and think why he had been sent there. The poem suggests he was there for a long time by using phrases like:

‘I sat all morning....’ and

‘Counting bells knelling classes to a close.’

The first phrase used obviously referred to how long he had been there, but the second was a little harder to fathom. If he was ‘counting bells knelling classes’, this would mean several classes have already started. Due to the large time gap between each lesson, he could have been waiting there for well over an hour. Also, the use of the word ‘knelling’ describing the bells, implies a funeral bell, and not a lesson bell. This immediately sets a sad mood in the poem along with the feeling of time dragging.

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In the second line of the stanza, Heaney uses both alliteration and assonance to describe the many bells ringing. The repetition of the sounds and letters could symbolise the many bells that had rung during his wait at the sick bay. The last line says

‘At two o’clock, our neighbours drove me home’.

I think that Heaney has added this line to emphasise the fact that something unusual has happened, because it isn’t a regular thing to have your neighbours pick you up from the sick bay.

In the second stanza, you notice that there has ...

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