“Compare and contrast the two poems ‘Refugee mother and child’ and ‘Mid term break.’”
...ewhat passing away the enormous time in front of him. In contrast, in the second poem we realize that the mother is somehow trying to stretch the time she has left, with her child by performing the act. People live in this world by relationships, around them. Both these poems present the affect of death on relationship very beautiful in vivid styles. In the second stanza of the ‘Mid-Term Break’ we come across the image of Heaney's father "crying". Heaney's father appears to be a strong man of few words, which we learn in the second line of stanza, “taken funerals in his strides.” So having him crying causes a powerful emotion in the reader, because each one is aware of the pain having to see your child die before you. We see a similar but a very differently handled situation in the second poem. The lines, “but not this one" distinguish that mother from the others, and how she had not lost trust. Her situation is a bit different from the father in the first poems because her child is going to die before her. Still she stands strong and brave to comforts both him, and herself. Analyzing the situation in both the poems, as readers we come to a conclusion that a woman though considered week, stands strong as a mother to protect her offspring from the whole world. The combing of hair is the last gesture. It is a ritual, and is a simple act taken for granted in our everyday lives. It is the very last loving touch of the mother. Due to the ailment of the child, the mother provides her child, with the only simple pleasure she can offer him; she combs his hair. This intensifies the reader's empathy and compassion for the mother. As a reader the poem refugee mother and child comes out to be more appealing in the true sense of emotions. One reason being the theme being presented in the very first stanza. Similarly in the first poem the mood is set almost immediately in the second line: Counting bells knelling classes to a close. I noticed how Heaney uses an alteration to the funereal sound of the bells and the feeling of time dragging. Chinua Achebe is more successful because of the strong use of the icon representation ...