Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney. Poet Seamus Heaney's 'Mid-Term Break' is about a personal experience he encountered. It deals with the issues of life and death in a family and also how different people deal with the situation. Initially the title suggests that the poem will be about a holiday, but as you delve deeper into the poem, you realize that the title has a much deeper meaning. and a darker meaning… In the first verse, we learn that Seamus Heaney is in the college infirmary waiting to be picked up. You become suspicious when his neighbor is picked up, which could indicate that something serious has happened. Time passes slowly, and Heaney uses alliteration to demonstrate this. I feel something is wrong because of the poet's choice of word "kneel." Kneeling is when a church bell rings to indicate a funeral. The clues become more obvious as you progress through the verses and are very effective in arousing suspicion. When Seamus Heaney arrives home, he is greeted by his father crying on the porch. A stereotypical male usually holds back his feelings and Heaney uses parentheses to demonstrate this. "On the porch I met my father crying --- He had always taken funerals calmly --- And Big Jim Evans said it was a hard blow. "Obviously something had caused him great pain, and the parenthesis is effective in showing that Heaney's father normally bottled up his feelings and was strong for everyone else, taking things in stride. Meanwhile, in the next verse." The baby cooed, laughed and rocked the baby. pram" This excerpt shows that the baby is unaware of his surroundings and what is happening...... in the center of the paper. .....ld, and was killed in a car accident..."A four-foot box, one foot for each year." The poet highlights the fact that his brother was just an innocent child and did not deserve to die at such an early stage of his life. Place this line separate from the rest of the stanzas and this draws your attention to it; it makes you think about how precious life is, and just when you think you have it all figured out, something happens that makes you question the purpose of life again. We think the natural order is that adults die before children and that's why it's such a difficult thing to deal with when a child dies in a family. One point I think Heaney was trying to make to the reader, is that no matter what tragedies happen in life, ultimately we just have to move on and accept the past in order to move on to the future.