Rob Knowles

ENG 305
9/29/14
Emotionless Journey
Seamus Heaneys Mid-term Break depicts the story of a young
man who is going through a life-changing event. The themes of death,
grief, and The speaker gives us a glimpse into the way that his family
deals with tragedy, while inadvertently showing how he himself deals
with it. Through precise diction and imagery, he sets the somber tone
and allows for the reader to experience death in a very real and honest
way.
In the first stanza, the speaker begins with describing himself
sitting in class waiting for the counting bells knelling classes to a
close. Knelling describes the bells that are rung during a funeral
service. This is our first indication that there has been a death. The
speaker makes it a point to include that its 2 oclock when his
neighbors drive him home. When reading this poem more than once,
you realize that his neighbors drove him home because his parents are
grieving at home. He finally gets home and meets his father on the
porch. His father Big Jim Evans [said] it was a hard blow. Hard blow
can be interpreted in the literal sense since we later find out that it was

a car accident; we can also interpret hard blow as a metaphor for the
emotional toll that death takes on people. In the third stanza, the
speaker, for the first time in the entire poem, expresses a feeling when
he says When I came in, I was embarrassed by old men standing up to
shake my hand. For anyone who has experienced death, there is a
sense of embarrassment when others try to console you. You dont
really know whether to say thank you or nothing at all.
The next half of the poem was the most significant for me. The
speaker begins to describe specific details of his surroundings. In my
own experience dealing with death, I relate with the speaker when it
comes to remembering minute things that I saw. In the fourth stanza
he mentions his mother holding his hand and cough[ing] out angry
tearless sighs. The imagery in this line is so strong; you can visualize
his mother, exhausted from feeling the pain, she begins to resort to
anger. Not only did the word knelling indicate that there had been a
death, but now in the fifth stanza, the speaker refers to an ambulance
arriving with the corpse. The speaker decides to use the word
corpse to create a morbid and cold tone. He describes the corpse as
stanched and bandaged by nurses. This line gave me the image of a
mummy being brought into the house.
Finally, the speaker goes up into the room to see him for the
first time in six weeks. The details that he gives about the snowdrops

and the candles that are at his bedside, create a serene feeling. There
has been so much feeling and emotion coming from his family and
visitors; now all of a sudden it feels silent and the focus is on him.
Snowdrops, candles, his brother looking paler now, all depict the
color white, until the speaker describes the poppy bruise on his left
temple. We can finally see some color. This is a metaphor for the
emotion that is now being brought out from within him. Rather than
saying that the body is laying in a coffin, the speaker decides to use
the word box. His word choice depicts his feelings about the death
emotionless. During the entire poem we never find out who died, until
the very last line when the speaker writes, A four foot box, a foot for
every year. We infer that this was his little brother, considering the
child was only 4 years old.
What I loved about this poem the most was how honestly is
depicts the process of dealing with death. His awkwardness and
inability to outwardly express his emotions is so relatable. He is
constantly observing his surroundings and describing what everyone
else is feeling, but never says anything about the way that he is
feeling. Through the speakers words and metaphors, we can
sympathize with him, but even then, he never outright tells us his
emotions; we only project our own feelings or how we would feel in
that situation onto the speaker of the poem.