Mid-Term Break

Mid-Term Break by Seamus Heaney The title’s  play on the word break (‘time off school ’) refers more poignantly  to a tragedy to which Heaney was exposed at the age of fourteen and led to a moment of severance that would affect his whole life. From peculiar changes in his daily routine, via stages of dawning reality, to the heart-rending visual impact of a corpse laid in its casket, Heaney comes to understand the irreversibility of his younger brother Christopher’s death (as result of a car accident in February 1953).  Driven home from school he responds impassively to the reactions of family and neighbours before coming face to face with his deceased brother and finding a form of words that […]