The use of language and structure to present the speaker’s eventual affirmation of his family role in Digging and Mid-Term Break Through the poems ‘Digging’ and ‘Mid-Term Break’ of Seamus Heaney, he explores one’s eventual affirmation of his role in the family despite the initial disappointment and guilt. “Digging” reflects on the traditional peat extraction which was commonly used for fuels by farmers during Heaney’s time. This emphasises the legacy of his family in relation to farming. The title ‘Digging’ underlines the metonymy in the last line, substituting Heaney’s pen to his forefathers’ spades. ‘Mid-Term Break’ conveys a distressing family incident, although conversely mid-term breaks are normally associated with a joyful mood.
Even from the title of the poem we are given clues that the narrator is young. ‘Mid Term Break’ is something that we associate with school, and therefore gives us clues that the narrator of the poem is a child. However, the title of the poem can also be somewhat misleading as the noun ‘break’ is something that has happy connotations, and this is most definitely not reflected within
Mid Term Break has a very somber and tense atmosphere which heavily centered on funereal imagery allow Heaney to explain that his brother has died without explicitly saying so. The voice in both poems is Heaney’s
Auden used hyperbole to capture his grief and his tragedy and convey them to the world. Mid-term Break is an elegy to Seamus Heaney’s brother who died in a car accident; the poet exposed the impact of his brother’s death on his family and outsiders. But the opening stanza starts with the poet at the sickbay ordinary kid who is
If the text had been written in a different time or place or language or for a different audience, how and why might it differ? Heaney from a Hindu Perspective Seamus Heaney’s iconic poem, Midterm Break, is enormously moving as it explores how an older brother confronts the traumatic situation of his younger brother’s death during the Wake. Wake is a ceremony where the last rites are performed in front of the deceased body (The Wake). The ideas of Catholicism and Irish Traditions is exceptionally prominent throughout the poem. Conversely, how would another type of audience be it from a different race, religion or generation, react to this poem?
They also differ in theme, rhyme type and rhyme scheme, and tone. The first similarities and differences between these poems are found in their theme. Both “The Face in the Mirror” and “Mirror” tell us that old age is not as bad as it appears to be and that the passage of time is not always cruel. This theme is evident in the lines, “He still stands ready,” (Graves line 14) and, “I am not cruel, only truthful,” (Plath line 4). However, each poem also has its own separate additional theme.
“My Papa's Waltz”, by Theodore Roethke, and “Those Winter Sundays”, by Robert Hayden are the two poems that are somewhat similar and both of these poems are about beloved fathers. Father is the man who is spends time with you and takes care of you. While doing so much for the family he gains the respect and love from the family. In these two poems Roethke and Hayden take a flashback at the actions of their fathers. Even though both of these poems propose that their fathers were not perfect, they still love them.
My poetry Explication Digging by Seamus Heaney has lot to offer when come to poetry explication. It’s great showing of symbols, imagery, allusion, and metaphors but how might this poem about a simple having simple dream about his father digging be so packed with literally items. First I’m going to evaluate Heaney poem stanza by stanza. To start things out with lines one and two. We are drawn close in to “between my finger and my thumb the squat pen rests; snug as a gun.
Moreover , the first part of the second section was neither rhymed nor equal in length and meter , and the second part did not follow a systematic structure but a sequence of phrases linked by ‘ she said ‘ and ‘ I said ‘ . Furthermore , in the poem ‘ third section , there was a shift from the modern urban environment of ‘ unreal city ‘ to the ancient blind prophet ‘ Tiresias ‘ , thereafter to the contemporary urban environment of London . On the contrary , The fourth section of the poem was the most rhymed and organized section . Finally , in the fifth section , Eliot get away from exemplary poetic styles to try structures usually connected to philosophy and religion . Thus , Throughout the poem , fragmentation played two roles : a Theme and a technique
The life of his descendants are rich veins of gold that he can mine as inspiration. Even though the humble lives of his father and grandfather banal compared to heaney's life. In one of his poems “Digging” he shows three generations of men from his family. “ Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.”(line 1) He’s the oldest and reflects on his father and grandfather. He shows the similarities through the generation, and the differences.