Seamus has used technical language and nautical imagery, and the poem “Mid –term break” uses the same devices and techniques as “Digging,” but without the pronouns, onomatopoeia, similes and rhyming couplets. He replaced them with emotional language, repetition, and last line explosive information technique. The differences and similarities of the structures of the two poems are obvious. The similarities are: In, “Digging” and “Mid-term break” some verses or stanzas deal with and or go into more detail about specific people, e.g. in, “Digging,” the people described by Seamus in specific stanzas or verses are: Heaney’s father digging (in the third, fourth and fifth stanza’s) and grandfather digging and how fast he dug when he was Seamus’s fathers age (this can be seen in the sixth and seventh stanzas).
The family theme is quite an important one in both of the poems as they
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`Mid-Term Break` is about when he leaves college and returns home to find out the news about his little brother. `Digging` is about his grandfather and how he is getting old and finding work difficult, so both poems are about family, but quite different circumstances. The layout of the two poems is very different. `Mid-Term Break` being very straight forward, just having three lines to each stanza and `Digging` being completely opposite and following no strategic pattern. Both the poems tell a story that will change Seamus's life and they also describe events or problems that happened in his childhood. Both poems also include vivid descriptions of his family and in particular vividly describe his father. The contrasts between the two poems is that "Mid term break" tells a very sad real life event where as "Digging" is an experience that only he experienced, whereas "Mid-Term Break" affected many other people.
Comparing his work has helped me understand better other poems as