Analysis
Heany's 'Mid-Term Break' and Johnson's 'On My First Sonne' have many things in common but there are things that are different as well.
'Mid-Term Break' (MTB) is a sad poem about the narrator's brother's death. The first paragraph has many key words that show us that the poem is not going to be a happy one. In the first line 'sick bay' gives us an idea that it will have something to with health. Also, the narrator's neighbors drove him home, instead of his parents. This tells us that something must be wrong. In the second stanza, we discover that the poem is about a funeral. In the third stanza, the author portrays the narrator as an adult who is capable of handling the emotions. Instead of crying or being extremely sad, the narrator feels 'embarrassed' by the old men that were standing up to shake his hand. The narrator is probably not thinking about the funeral at the moment.
He is thinking about himself. As quickly the author portrays the narrator as an adult, he shows him as a child. He does this by making the narrator holding his mother's hand and letting out 'angry tearless sighs'. The next two stanzas describe his brother. But it is strange how in stanza 5, line 3, the narrator refers to his brother as 'the corpse' instead of his brother. It seems, as the narrator is being objective as not to let his emotions get in the way. The author might be using the term 'wearing a poppy bruise' to be referring to the poppy that grows in Flander's Field. The poppy was used to remember those who died in World War 2. The narrator says 'he lay in the four-foot box as in his cot' as to show that his...