Seamus Heaney's poem 'Mid-Term Break' is a poem about a boy finding out about his smaller brother's death. The feelings in 'Mid-Term Break' are different from conventional poems because instead of grief and sorrow there are feelings ranging from boredom to anger. These feelings are complex because they are the feelings that you would not expect so this poem is quite unique.
             He is taken home by his neighbours and comes to see his weeping dad. When he is at home his parent's friends and relatives meet the young man. This makes him uneasy and there is a contrast when the baby coo's and laughs when everyone is quiet and sad. The next day he walks up to where his dead brother is lying and we find out how he died and that he only had a small 'poppy bruise' to prove it.
             At the beginning of the poem a young man is furthering his knowledge at college when he hears of the disastrous death of his four-year-old brother.
             The boy's complex mixture of feelings start when he is still in the college and waiting to be taken home. He is feeling bored from waiting so long in the sickbay so he doesn't do much but just sit. We hear that he is in the sickbay and any traumatised person who had just lost a younger brother wouldn't 'just sit all morning'. Although he is slightly anxious to see his parents and receive comfort for this disaster he is restless from waiting in the same room all morning. In this stanza there is the first hint that someone has died because we hear that he was 'counting bells knelling classes to a close' and the word knelling implies a death because it is linked to funerals. There is also alliteration in this sentence with 'counting', 'classes' and 'close' and this helps suggest the boredom that the boy is feeling. When he eventually is taken home, it is by his neighbours, which shows either that his parents are just too upset to drive a car.
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