Comparison between “Death & Co” And “ Mid-Term Break”

The poem “Mid Term Break” highlights and portrays the experience of speaker’s little brother’s ( christopher) death.Heaney uses puns throughout the poem. Firstly, in the title "break" which could mean a break from school, or it could mean a break in the “family”. This could be his way of showing us “the readers” two different ways to look at things, and to show that there are always two sides to every story. I would say that understanding this poem is not as hard as the other poems, as we can see the meaning is not so complicated.
“Death & Co” written by Sylvia Plath around the timeline of world war II, this poem clearly shows the events and distress that was going around at the time. Death has been described as two people in the poem, “Two, of course there are two” the first being demonic, evil and ugly; this face of death is so evil and ugly that Plath called it “Bastard”', the second death character is amusing, he smokes and smiles (contrasting the other death who cannot smile and cannot smoke either).

Both poets use the theme of “death” to express their feelings and to maintain an atmosphere of darkness to show how they feel or what phase of life they are going through.
Heany uses some intsresting points in mid term break, once again if we look at the title “Mid-Term Break” which gives a sense of fun, rejoicing and no stress at all; misleads to an idea of happiness because the reader would get an idea that this poem would be happy and active mood. Yet ironically, the poem turns out to be totally opposite; sad and awfully calm.

However Plath uses “Death & Co” as her title , which straight away gives an idea of sadness and gloomy atmosphere compare to Heaney’s. This shows that predictably this poem is going to be about Sylvia committing suicide or wanting to hug death, which she has tried many times but faced no success.

Family love is also shown in “Mid-Term Break”, coming back home after a long time;speaker also meets his family,who are also going through a hard time overcoming the stress and suffering of their loss . Death is one shattering reality of life that drives people into a great great deep deprssion, although family love is the one that cures the wounds and prepare one to regain energy to live the life happily again. In the poem Heany uses ““my mother held my hand” and “In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.” Gives a feeling of alot of responsibilty on the speaker as its shown he is the eldest in previous stanza. However his heart is breaking, and he wants to burst in tears, but he cant. Though, in his mum’s hands, he could releif and cry. Family is a biggest support whenever a heartbreaking event takes place, which is shown in this poem.