Neil Gaiman on his poetry, before reading "Instructions."
Don't you just hate when a text given you a perfectly adequate description of a piece? Out of the poems selected, I truly enjoyed "The Vacuum," but most of what I would say, the text said. "Mid-Term Break" is the poem I would choose after "The Vacuum." The intrigue in every stanza, slowly presents a family's sorrow. This poem is spoken like a short story. It releases details sparingly hitting the reader with the experiences of the speaker. "Counting the bells knelling classes to a close" (Line 2), screams of anticipation. He begins in the sick bay, and with the term coming to a break, he should find himself relieved. The first hint of peculiarity is his neighbors picking him up.
I have seen my father cry. It was rare, and it was always death. Before "He had always taken funerals in his stride" (Line 5) was spoken, I knew that this poem was about death. That line, matched with the neighbors picking up the speaker, narrows down that the deceased is in the narrator's immediate family. Finding the baby oblivious as he walks in, counters the father on the porch. There is an adult crying, and a child laughing, while the speaker has revealed little emotion, as if he is numbed by the experience. Three types of grief are paralleling three stages of life. The narrator is as unsure of how to deal with this death, as most college students are unsure on how to deal with any major happening. We are often numb.
The next few lines talk of the family/friends of the family. I have been to the funeral of an immediate family member, and it is embarrassing to have people speak of you and find yourself emptily consoled. Taking the narrators hand, the mother of the family sighs angrily, but without tears. Why is she not as openly distraught as the father? She is angry, which says that maybe this death could have been prevented. The corpse is brought to the house and the evening comes to an end.
As the poem concludes, the narrator visits the deceased. Upon entering the room the speaker sees that "snowdrops and candles soothed the bedside" (Lines 16-17). Snowdrops are white, which is often a symbol of purity, and candles of peace. Noting the paleness of the deceased also denotes purity. The only mark is a small bruise on his head. The narrator compares the small coffin that he is lying in to the bed he slept in, as if death is just a long sleep. The answer to the how is "the bumper knocked him clear," (Line 21)) saying a car had hit the little boy. The ultimate heartbreak is using the dimensions of the box, to define the young age of the child.
Works Cited:
Booth, Alison, and Kelly J. Mays. The Norton Introduction to Literature. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2011. Print.
Excellent interpretation. I only differ in the mother's reaction to the events. I think rather than it being something prevented, I think it's more like a mother being so enraged at a world that would take her son so young. That's just how I read it anyway.
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