Mid-Term Break

Grief is the central emotion at the heart of the poem, as Heaney, writing over a decade later, processes the memory of his younger brother’s death. The overwhelming sense in the poem’s opening three stanzas is that words are inadequate in the face of such tragedy. Although the neighbors are well-meaning in their attempts to comfort the boy and his family, their clichés only emphasize their inability to match the occasion. Likewise, the father and mother are unable to articulate speech, and even the mother holding her son’s hand only partially bridges the emotional gulf. Grief, in other words, is presented as an isolating emotion: a stimulus for realizing the gap in communication that exists between the self and others, marking growth in the speaker’s knowledge of the world. From being a child stuck in the familiar rhythms and routines of school, the young Heaney is thrust into the adult world, and gains an understanding of the tragic fragility of life. Thus, in the poem’s final stanzas, as he regards the body of his younger brother, he sees it with a piercing clarity. The language of the poem becomes the way grief is processed. Yet, Heaney’s poetic