Mid-Term Break

The bells that appear in Line 2, foreshadowing the tragedy to come, place the poem in a context of Christian tradition, in which the ringing of bells has a spiritual resonance, symbolically linking humankind to God. By using the word “knelling” to describe their action, Heaney establishes a fatalistic tone, since a knell is the particular type of bell-ringing historically used to announce a death. Although Heaney was brought up Catholic, he was not particularly religious. In a materialist philosophy of the world where life on earth is all that can be known, the bells therefore represent a desperate and perhaps pointless attempt to communicate with an unreachable God, a thwarted communication that cannot assuage the horrible finality of death.

Throughout his work, Heaney shows a fascination for things well-made by human hands. In “Mid-Term Break,” this takes the form of his younger brother’s coffin, a four-foot box, which appears twice, first in Line 20, and again in Line 22. In using the term “box” rather than “coffin,” Heaney is honoring the plain speech of his rural Irish roots and yielding to the desire to euphemize what has happened to his brother.