Comparison of Mid-Term Break, The Field Mouse, and On My First Sonne Es

Comparison of Mid-Term Break, The Field Mouse, and On My First Sonne The above poems are written by 3 different people and on reading them they seem to be about very different things. But at heart, they are about death and the pain that appears afterwards. Seamus Heaney's Mid-Term Break is a memory of his four-year-old brother's death. Gillian Clarke's The Field Mouse is about death in a political conflict compared to a death in nature. Finally On My First Sonne by Ben Johnson is about the death of his son and the religious view of the situation. Both Heaney and Johnson's poems are about the death of a close loved one and how it is dealt with emotionally and in reality. On looking at the title of Heaney's poem, you almost immediately assume that is a happy one, possibly about what he spends his holidays doing. This of course is not the case. Unlike the other two poems, you do not know immediately who has died or even if there is a death. Throughout the poem he keeps us guessing what is happening. He gives us a clue and we have to piece it together like a detective putting a jigsaw puzzle together to solve a crime. Also the fact that it is a memory and he is talking about himself as a child shows how badly it would have affected him and his parents emotionally. Through Heaney talks about the reaction of all his family members to his brother's death, Johnson only talks about how his son's death affected him. You can see that since the deceased was his first son, that he is hit emotionally very hard and seems to blame himself, but at the same time consulates himself by thinking that he has gone to a better place. Line 5 'O, could I loose all father now. For why.' seems to indicate that he has lost a... ...connection that the rest of us probably would not. I feel the poem that really explains the situation well is Seamus Heaney's Mid-Term Break as it keeps the person in suspense over who has died, but delivers a shock at the end when we find out who it really is. This really mixes your emotions and unlike the other 2 makes you feel sorry for a death that happened over 20-30 years ago. I also feel it is better because it focuses on the actually death. while Healey does fill in these criteria. Clarke's poem compares the killing of a field mouse to the killings in the Bosnian War. Though this is clever, it does not show the bad things in the Bosnian War as in reality the killing of one field mouse cannot really be literally compared to the massive killings involving the Muslims. The above reasons are why I think overall Seamus Heaney's poem is the best.