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, Copyright © A+ Sumarries -- May not be distributed --
Who is Seamus Heaney?
▪ Born April 13, 1939
▪ Irish poet, writer, and lecturer from Northern Ireland
▪ Was born the eldest of nine (9) children at the family farmhouse, Mossbawn, near
▪ Castledawson, 30 miles to the north-west of Belfast, in Northern Ireland
Context of the poem
▪ In 1951, Seamus Heaney was 12 years old
▪ He went to St. Columb’s College in Derry (Ireland) where he was a boarding pupil
▪ Whilst attending the college, his younger brother, Christopher, was killed in a road accident
▪ This poem involves the poet recalling the events that happened to him after this
Title
▪ Holiday time – fun and relaxation
▪ Contrasting why speaker has to “take a break”
Structure of the poem
▪ In stanza 5 there are instances of half rhyme (sigh/arrived) (corpse/nurses)
▪ However, it’s in the final two lines of this stanza that the poet uses the only full rhyme found in the
poem
▪ This helps bring closure to the poem and gives the ending a sense of finality
▪ This emphasises the theme of death
Theme of the poem
▪ Childhood/family: the poem involves the poet recalling an event from his own childhood.
▪ It involves Heaney’s family and the tremendous loss his family deals with
▪ Also involves the narrator ‘growing up’ due to the terrible nature of the experience
▪ Death/loss: the fact that the poem deals with the death of a child encourages the reader
▪ and narrator to question the pointlessness of death.
▪ Focus of poem is on the reactions of people to death and the way people attempt to make sense of
the loss
▪ Memory: the poem recalls an event from the past and this links it to other poems in the
▪ collection that involve looking back in order to see the present and future clearly.
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