Both ‘Mid-term break’ and ‘Funeral Blues’ deal with the subject of death but they do so from different perspectives. Compare their similarities and differences and analyse which you prefer and why.
...he death of a loved one. When the boy enters the house ‘old men’ suddenly treat him like an adult and discuss who he is and what his position is. This is juxtaposed with ‘as my mother held my hand’, his mother holding his hand and treating him like a child, but who is supporting who? ‘Coughed out angry tearless sighs’ describes the mother’s actions, she is so upset that she cannot even cry. This is more effective than an image of someone wailing and screaming in grief and overeacting. The boy seems to try to detatch himself from the body of his brother as he calls him ‘the corpse’. The next day the boy walks into a calming , beautiful picture as if in a dream. Now the boy cannot help but feel attatched once more to his brother, ‘him’. The observation the boy makes at first about his brother is ‘paler now’. It doesn’t seem to have shocked him to see his brother’s dead body, it could be that he can’t quite comprehend that his bother is gone now and can’t come back. The atmosphere in this verse is very different from the previous verses. While the other verses sounded like a funeral march this verses is very calming, almost like a dream. This verse flows a lot more than the others, it gives an aura of acceptance of what has happened. ‘Wearing a poppy bruise’ is interesting. It is describing the size and shape of the bruise. It could also mean that this is what the boy will remember his brother by, as poppies are associated with death and memorials. Juxtapositioning is used because the poppy bruise is set against the pale skin. ‘The four foot box as in his cot’ is effective because it sounds like the narrators brother is just sleeping. The narrator still holds hope in a way, that his brother will rise again, maybe from a religious point of veiw this is what he is still holding on to. In this verse also we have the line ‘the bumper knocked him clear’ this is ambiguous with Jim Evans’ words ‘hard blow’. Jim Evans’ first implied in the first verse that the cause of the childs death was due to a car, and now it is confirmed that he was hit by one. ‘A four foot box, a foot for every year’ is the last line of the poem is set away from the rest, as it carries the message. It is there to shock the reader and to make them think about the fact that death doesn’t chose and it doesn’t just come to the elderly. ‘Four foot box’ is used twice in the poem because the poet wants to get across the age of the child and how small, innocent and young he is. In ‘Mid-term break’ the verses are uniform and they lead on to each other. The use of verses breaks the flow of the poem and makes the reader stop and think. It also stops the reader taking the poem at surface value. The reader has to stop to read the poem correctly, this provokes thought as to why the poet has done this. Also the poem sounds like it is written as the memories of the poet come to mind. A sub-message ‘death can’t be planned’ is present also due to this style of writing. Funeral Blues is from the perspective of a bereaved adult. The poem seems to have been written when the grief was very new for the poet isn’t rational and is blowing everything out of proportion. The language in this poem is very emotional and ostentatious. In this poem the bereaved only tells of their thoughts, they seem very selfish. The whole rhythm of the poem mimics the sound of the drum used in the first verse. The long lines give the poem a very solemn effect. The first two verses contain the bereaved asking of impossible things. He wants the death of this person to be acknowledged and grieved and his death to be marked as an occasion of royal proportions. The poet starts the beat, rhythm and feel of the poem when he talks about the ‘muffled drum’ which ties in with the funeral march. There is a definite rhyme scheme in this poem which again gives the feel of a slow funeral march. In the first stanza wants total silence and so respect for the deceased. He demands that the clocks be stopped and even the dogs to be silenced. The clocks being stopped could signify wish that time would stop completely and maybe go backwards. This verse seems like the grief has just ...