ok, so we're all feelin the need for a break, but i highly doubt it's the kinda break Seamous Heaney talks bout in his poem, "Mid-Term Break". in this poem, Heaney creates a somber tone and a "hidden message" (yeah, that's what i wanna call the one u gotta look fer, u got a prob, 2 bad, deal) of the feeling of loss caused by war. He creates this feeling though his use of diction and imagery.
the diction in this piece just kinda smacks u in the face. Heaney uses a lot of emotion words to give the reader the fell of being over run w/emotion like they would b if they were experiencing death in war. the strange mixture of words like laughed and cooed with words like angry and crying. these help 2 give the feel of bein stuck in a war. life goes on while a war is goin n this mix of happy n sad words gives us that feel. additionally, he uses words with a connotation of sickness n/or death like college sick bay or bells. in a college sick bay you are surrounded with sickness all the time and bells are commonly used at church survices and funeral serives in particular.
the other thing that really screams @ u in this poem is the imagery that Heaney uses, specifically the war imagery. the use of things like the ambulemce arrived and the corpse (he uses the corpse rather than my brother or something- all i can pic is Hawkeye talkin bout meatball surgery and none of u actually understood that ref. so w/e but i like it so there it is) and gaudy scars and poppy brusies and stanched and bandaged. these are thins u'd spect 2 hear while talkin 2 a war correspondant and the detached feeling that u get is a feeling u'd get from a bad news anchor. these aren't thins u'd spect 2 hear bout a guy whose little brother just died cuz he was hit by a car. idk, seems odd. it's almost like the little kid was a soldier in the fight that the speaker was talkin bout.
i guess the important thin is that we understand that life isn't somethin that u can sluff through n have it always b ok. that's what Heaney is getting at here, life doesn't always work out the way we spect it 2. sometimes little kids die, sometimes bad stuff happens, sometimes soldiers get killed. the important thin seems to b that they were fightin fer somethin they believed in or that they were playin a game that they liked. (yeah, if ur hearin the sound track in my mind, you're totally hearin John Mayer's Believe rt now...) this is the effect that Heaney achieves in "med-term break" a somber tone and the feeling of loss due 2 war.
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2 comments:
I really liked this analysis! I never would have seen this and this commentary really helped me to understand the poem's parallel between the loss as a result of war and as a result of a loved one.
maybe im looking at it too literally but i didnt see war at all, talor. i see where you were going with that but it seems like a bit of a stretch. i agree with the strong emotion words that seem to bombard the reader but the connection to war doesnt seem to strong to but good job on looking that deeply.
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