Mid Term Break Diction

The author of the poem, Mid-Term Break, achieves his purpose and goal through the use of “removed” mood and tone, the diction, and vivid imagery, all in an effort to show human reaction and the effects of growing up. I had a very strong reaction to this poem. As I was reading it, I kept trying to put myself into the narrator’s position. I kept trying to understand how he felt and what he was thinking. But of course, my view is biased because I have my own feelings and emotions completely separate of the characters. The character seems to have no feelings or emotions tied to this event, while I would have many. I kept trying to grasp at that idea. Another major idea that stood out to me was the lack of information about what is happening. …show more content…
As still being a younger person, it is likely that the narrator has never experienced death before. The lack of experience could serve as an explanation for the vagueness of the poem. In the final stanzas the narrator delivers the strongest imagery in the entire piece to the reader. The narrator describes his brother as being “paler now and wearing a poppy bruise on his left temple.” Those descriptions serve to shock the reader and show the reader how terrible the child’s death was, but yet the narrator doesn’t react to it. But the more powerful piece of imagery is when the narrator describes his brother as being in “a four foot box, a foot for every year.” It is made apparent to the reader that his brother was only four years old. Most people would find this description to be shocking or incredibly sad, but to the narrator, it is not. Some of the more interesting uses of diction occur in the middle of the poem. For example, when the narrator uses his experience with his mother to describe how he feels by “[coughing] our angry tearless sighs.” The use of “tearless” is to show the narrators complete removal of emotion from the