Mid-Term Break

Sunday, Sunday, not so fun day Sunday. This Sunday, I am blogging about the poem Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney. At first I picked this poem because it seemed as though it would be about college and I just want to be in college already. Not a good enough reason, but a start. As I read, i'd skip lines and not really process which is when I got really confused. So, I read back through the poem and thought. Deep thought. This poem is not about college at all. Wait. Kind of. Yes, life.

First I analyzed the literal part of this poem. This fellow was a college student and while he was away, his 4 year-old brother was hit by a car and died. Heaney came back for the funeral and wake. The part that struck me was not that this was a tragic event, but that Heaney wrote about it with such a calmness. If my sibling died, I would not be that calm. As I thought about that, it lead me to a deeper analysis of the poem.

I related to this poem. Which freaks me out. (Not totally though. I love my siblings and even though I can't wait to move away, I wouldn't be this calm if one of them were to die) In order to understand this poem on a deeper level, I thought of it in terms of myself. Let me explain my train of thought:

As graduation nears, I have found myself consumed with thoughts of college and what I will do when I leave home. It's almost as if I haven't even been home at all anymore, though I have been. I am always somewhere else in my mind. I have felt myself becoming distant and removed from my house, family, school, even this town. Since these are the last few months that i will be able to see my family whenever I want and feel that closeness, I should probably be taking advantage of them. I can't make myself do so, even though I will probably regret it later. All I want is to leave all of this behind and discover, learn, become an independent. What does this have to do with a poem where college is mentioned only in the first tercet?

It explains the removed feeling of the poem. Heaney was away at college and from the line
 "I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. paler now..."
It would seem that he did not frequently visit home and was not very close with his family. Removed. Moving away and getting older. Becoming an independent. Does that to you apparently. So what?

So, Hearney was probably sad about his brothers passing, but he still viewed the event almost from the outside looking in and hardened. It all seems summed up in the last powerful line standing alone. If I was in that position writing this poem, that poem to me would mean:

My brother was four years old when he died, and I am sad about that. I didn't know him very well though. I was busy trying to live this independent life. I was too detached from all of this to pay much attention to him. I could dwell on how sad this is, but if I think about it I will be overwhelmed with guilt for never caring to get close to him or be there as a sibling should be. Grown and in college or not. So, I think about his death as a matter of fact.